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Excited to test the smart thermostat

Another fantastic winter has just passed.

  • I notice, however, that the trees’ teeny, tiny green leaves are present as I turn to face the outside.

Southerners are approaching spring quickly because it is late February there. While the first hints of pollen, new growth, and daffodils warm my heart, it’s also a sign for me to call the HVAC company. When the local forecast says that the highs will remain in the 90s, I’ll be shocked. I anticipate that it will be several months before that becomes a regular occurrence. However, I know that I’ll need some cooling comfort once it gets to 90 degrees. While the peak heating hours are still in the 80s, I try to keep the windows open. This is due to the fact that it gets cool enough in the evenings for us to sleep without air conditioning. Evenings with temperatures in the 90s cause the heat pump to turn on. Therefore, it is best practice in our home to have the air conditioner tuned up right away. But when it comes to air conditioning this year, I’m going to rely on some new HVAC technology. Now that we have a smart thermostat, I can’t wait to see how much the heat pump efficiency will increase as a result. Since we installed the smart thermostat in the fall of last year, it hasn’t had to do much. During our mild winters, the heat pump doesn’t see a lot of heating use. As a result, the smart thermostat will now take into account how we use the air conditioning in this house after months of learning our habits.
hydronic heater

Comfort at the house with zone controlled HVAC

Sometimes, I actively seek out a little extra work to do at my job.

This is due to the fact that the home’s central air conditioning is being used by a large number of teenagers.

The commercial HVAC systems of downtown office buildings are where my wife and I both work. Throughout the day, we actually text one another to coordinate who will be in charge of keeping the kids in line at night. By taking this stance, we both share the responsibility of being the parent who returns home as soon as work is finished. Nowadays, things in our house are different. When I lived alone, I used to enjoy coming home each night to the comfort my HVAC system offered. It was so exciting when the children would all rush to hug and kiss me. I’m looking to stay inside the zone-controlled HVAC of the office these days because there is just so much noise, arguing, or outright screaming matches. The office’s zone-controlled HVAC system actually gave me the idea to lower the level of tension in the home. For a long time, the kids and the thermostat setting have been at odds. The kids can’t agree on a thermostat setting, whether it’s because they have different internal temperature sensitivity or they’re just being spiteful. Therefore, I made the decision that maybe the HVAC specialists could remove at least one source of conflict from our home. The HVAC specialist was able to visit and alter our current heating and cooling system. As a result, there are now six separate heating and cooling zones inside the house. Even better than I anticipated, it seems to be working out. Since I installed zone controlled HVAC in the house, the kids have been much less argumentative with one another.
furnace filter

Replace the air filter immediately

Throughout the past few years, I’ve learned a lot about improving my health. And that has been beneficial because I have been able to significantly alter some unproductive behaviors. I genuinely didn’t want to be that fat, unfit, and elderly guy who couldn’t do anything to change the situation. My intended outcome did not include spending the entire day inside my air-conditioned home binge-watching television. Look, as we get older, slower, and spend more time indoors, the residential HVAC system in our home becomes more and more important to us. Additionally, at that point, one may decide to retire and turn over control of the HVAC system in their office to someone else. It will probably be 10 years before I leave my office’s commercial HVAC. When I leave my office’s zone-controlled HVAC, though, I want to go outside and explore. In order to maintain my level of activity, I really wanted to make changes to my health and wellness. In addition to a healthy diet, regular exercise, meditation, and adequate rest, I discovered another simple way to do so. And all I had to do was swap out the HVAC system’s inexpensive air filters for a HEPA filter. Actually, more than 99 percent of all airborne pollutants are removed by this kind of air filter. Our home’s central air conditioning system has transformed the quality of the air in the house. Pretty soon I became less stuffy and my breathing was easier. Along with all the other health and wellness changes I’ve been making, the HEPA filter actually improved the quality of the air inside my home. I won’t have to wait too long before I’m free to enjoy, explore, and go on all the adventures I’ve ever wanted.

a/c serviceman

I can’t be a slug in the air conditioning

I have gained a lot of knowledge over the past two years since I started to pay attention to my health and wellness.

when you’ve sat in your home office for a few decades with the air conditioning on all the time. The body doesn’t adjust to change right away. I was reluctant to get up from my desk at first. However, I purchased one of those desk risers to ensure that I don’t spend the entire day sitting in the office’s commercial HVAC system. Then again, I was exhausted when I got home. Leaving the cool comfort of my home to go for a workout was the last thing I wanted to do. However, it required that. When I got home, all I wanted to do was collapse in my recliner and take in as much of the home’s HVAC as I could. I just wanted beer, sandwiches, and chips to start appearing while I was doing that. Naturally, that’s not how you get to the point where you’re not endangering your health. To get up and move around, you need to have some dedication. For the first seven to eight months, I simply assumed that my body would never respond. But once more, 20 or more years of neglecting your health will do that. So I’m happy to report that I’m about to enter my first spring where I really feel good in decades. I get to spend a lot of time outside because I live in a climate that allows it. The heat pump is only occasionally needed for heating. We often have weather that is just like that. However, in order to avoid the day’s busiest heating times, I’ll soon be switching my outdoor activity to the mornings and evenings.
heater for sale

Making preparations for the summer cooling season

March is so close, and I’m so excited.

Here, it indicates that the basketball is getting intense and the air conditioning may start to turn on.

Whatever it is about college basketball that makes me so addicted, I have no idea. I became enamored with it as soon as I was a young child and watched it with my dad in the central air conditioning of my home. You inevitably have to pledge allegiance to a college when you’re a southern child. As a young person, I did that. With an earpiece and a transistor radio, I can still picture myself inside my junior high school’s radiant heating system. It seems unreal that so much time has passed for those radios to essentially disappear. The years fly by, and so much has changed. Our home’s residential HVAC system was recently replaced, which is pretty amazing to us. This was following nearly 30 years of nearly flawless heating and cooling. When we initially purchased this home, that heat pump was the best we could afford. And thanks to regular, seasonal HVAC upkeep, there were no issues with the vehicle until almost the very end. My new residential HVAC is helping me welcome the cooling season this year. This includes all of the HVAC maintenance that we skipped over for the previous 15 or so years. The smart thermostat managing the air conditioning is going to be so nice. So, when I’m watching basketball in March, I won’t even have to get up off the couch. Simply relaxing on my couch while the new HVAC technology manages the air conditioning is an option for me. So I don’t miss a basket, I’m all for that.

washable filter

I loved our old HVAC technician

At the house where I grew up, we used to have people over at our house all the time.

It wasn’t just people coming over for social visits and parties, though.

We also had lots of salesmen and repairmen coming over to the house too. My very favorite repairman was the HVAC technician who used to come over to fix our furnace for us. He would always come and talk to me and hang out with me before and after he was doing the heating and cooling repairs for us. Not only that, but he would let me hang around with him while he was down in the basement in the furnace room working. I always used to think that that was so cool when I was a kid. I mean, I was the only kid I knew who was allowed to go and help out the repairman who would come over to do work! I used to feel all grown up because he would let me hand him the right tools from the tool box and sometimes he would even show me what he was working on. I feel like I learned a lot about heating and cooling and ventilation back then when I was a kid. I mean, kids can absorb all kinds of things when they are little, and I know that I learned a lot from that guy. The HVAC technician was definitely my favorite out of anyone who ever came to work on the house. It was just nice of him to let me hang out with him. Once in a while, you meet an adult who really just wants to be nice to a kid and teach them things and I think that’s the kind of guy he was.

hvac

The church gym is always having trouble with the heating

The church gym is always having trouble with the heating system that we had installed in it for some reason. Whenever we decided to put a new heating and cooling system in the gym, we shopped around a lot to try to make the best decision. We must have talked to a dozen different commercial HVAC companies about the heating and cooling system that we needed for the gym. They told us that since it was such a big area to heat and cool, it was considered light commercial HVAC. That made sense to me, even though a church isn’t necessarily commercial. Anyway, the heating system hasn’t been all that great for us. From the day that they came to install it, it seems like there has just been one issue after another with the heating system for some reason. I am starting to wonder if we chose a dud when we picked the gym’s heating system. The HVAC company has been great, though. They always come out to fix it for us whenever we are having issues with it. Since it’s still under warranty, we haven’t had to pay for any of the repairs or part replacements yet. That’s nice, but I would prefer it if we weren’t having any issues with it at all! I am hoping that they are going to get everything figured out before the warranty runs out. If that doesn’t happen, we are going to have to spend a lot of the church’s money on repairs and I would hate for that to happen!

air quality

She has been missing her cooling system on the drive home from work

Jenny was so glad when traffic started moving again, despite the fact that she was seriously covered in sweat and dehydrated

Jenny didn’t think much of it when the cooling system in her vehicle gave out on her last week. She knew that she did not have the money to put forth for repairs quite yet, but Jenny is a hardy individual and she figured that she could make it for some time then get the work done. That being said, it is early August, and it is warm and humid weather conditions, to be sure. Morning commutes were not terrible. Jenny just cracked the windows. But part of why it wasn’t so exhausting is that she goes to work when the sun still hasn’t quite come up, so it’s a little cooler than it would be otherwise. Coming to the beach house in the evening was another issue. Yesterday was overcast and windy. It rained a bit, however not so much to dissuade Jenny from cracking the windows for air. However, today, Jenny was honestly missing her cooling system on the drive to her beach house from work. As long as her vehicle is moving, at least she has the blowing air for air circulation. Wouldn’t you know it though, Jenny got stuck in traffic because of a major accident. This accident stalled the traffic and eventually stopped for a disappointing two hours. Jenny kept time from the moment her vehicle basically came to a standstill, so she knew how long she was there crawling along. With no cooling system, the inside of her vehicle honestly started to heat up. The temperature control read 96° outside! Jenny did not have a water bottle or anything, so she was honestly starting to get a little concerned. Leaving the windows open gave her a little relief, however the fumes from the exhaust of the cars and trucks around her made it quite uncomfortable. Jenny was so glad when traffic started moving again, despite the fact that she was seriously covered in sweat and dehydrated. She shall be getting her cooling system fixed by the end of the week.

air duct in DeSoto Texas

She imagines their electric bills to be quite high

My friend prefers visiting her aunt and uncle as often as she can.

They live about 20 hours away.

My friend, Cate, moved further out to the edge of town after university, but her aunt and uncle still live in the same lake house she’s known them to live in, in a small town near the downtown area. My friend tends to visit them regularly, and they enjoy talking about life and how things are going and reminiscing while listening to the many stories. One thing Cate has noticed lately, however, is that her aunt and uncle prefer warmer temperatures more and more. She didn’t notice all that much when she was a kid, however as an adult, it seemed like her aunt and uncle preferred quite a high temperature on the temperature control. These days it’s nearly unbearable, because it’s the winter, and as a result, they cranks up the temperature control just about as high as it can go. Cate worries about them, because they have a furnace and Cate imagines their electric bills to be quite high. My friend insisted that they install carbon monoxide detectors, at least, in the event of a gas leak. She’s glad that they seem to have the funds to maintain their gas furnace, and it’s relatively new, because it was upgraded not too long ago. Cate is glad about that. It’s just that she can tell that their frail, aged body just can’t seem to retain as much heat anymore. That’s why she is getting them all sorts of colorful and comfortable blankets as gifts, which they always use.

 

 

DeSoto Texas dual fuel system

A messy experience while looking for a heating technician

Something went wrong with the heating in our rental apartment last winter. I tried everything, including changing the settings of our smart thermostat to an emergency setting, but nothing worked. We needed home heating since the entire family was home just before the holidays. None of us knew heater maintenance, so we had to call the heating company as an emergency for them to send us a heating technician as soon as possible. The nightmare hit another low for us because the heating dealer informed us that every HVAC professional they have had done to sort multiple calls from homeowners. We couldn’t do without heating, so after booking, we would be added to the queue if any of their experts came back before we got an expert to help us. I looked online while my husband went to ask our nearest neighbor more about heating experts in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, they used the same heating business we had called but mentioned one more heating dealer in the area, but they didn’t have contacts. Interestingly, I had found the company’s website online, which gave contact information, but as our luck would have it, the number went to voicemail. We were getting desperate as the hours passed without help with indoor comfort. The only solution would be to drive to their premises and get a technician to come to us, which worked in our favor because one of the heating industry experts returned from a new heating installation visit and got assigned to our home. Our heat pump installation was blowing cold air instead of hot air because the refrigerant was leaking. As much as the repair cost was high, buying a new heat pump would have been more expensive, so we are glad it was something we could pay for.

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