Knowing When to Fix Your AC Unit

 

Any house or public building today such as a mall or a school will need all of its utilities installed correctly and in good working order, from plumbing services to the electricity supply to the HVAC system to the Internet, and if these systems break down or become inefficient, they may make a building expensive and uncomfortable to live in. Homeowners must be ready if their residential AC unit is about to break down or get filthy, and a residential AC unit can be fixed, cleaned, or even replaced entirely with a new one whenever HVAC maintenance crews are hired to visit the home and get to work. Heating and cooling does not have to be a hassle. A clean, modern, power-efficient residential AC unit can keep the home comfortable and price-friendly to live in, and furnace repair may also be done if need be. What can go wrong with a home’s or a commercial building’s heating and cooling systems, anyway?

A Residential AC Unit and Issues

A number of problems may affect the residential AC unit of an American home today, and if there are problems, the climate control becomes disrupted and the electric bills may spike. After all, must over 50% of a home’s electricity goes to the HVAC system alone, so if that utility is being overworked, that wastes a lot of power. For one thing, the system may become dirty or clogged, and this can impede air flow, forcing the blower fans to work extra hard to get cooled or warm air into the home and maintain the climate inside. The vents or air ducts may become clogged with dirt or even blocked, such as a squirrel or rat nest inside the ducts, and if the blower fans themselves are coated with dirt such as dust, pollen, animal droppings, or spider webs, they will lose efficiency and need to blow harder and longer to get proper air flow going. And if the ducts are damaged, such as with rips and tears or if a section comes loose, a lot of warm or cool air will leak out and impair the climate control efforts. Two in three homes have an air conditioner, so if too many homes have clog issues, this can add up to a lot of wasted electricity per year.

Even if the heating and cooling system itself is not damaged or dirty, the rest of the home might be interfering with climate control. For example, drafty windows or doors may leak warm or cool air every single day, and this will disrupt the air conditioning efforts. The walls or roof may have thin or nonexistent insulation, which will allow far too much warm or cool air to get out, and the heating and cooling system will be overworked trying to compensate for this constant loss, and this will reflect on the electric bill. The good news is that it is never too late to fix any of these issues.

Fixes for the Home AC

Repairing the home’s climate control issues means dealing with the problem at the source. If the windows or doors are drafty, they can be replaced to seal those leaks, and bare windows should have window treatments installed. Blinds and screens can block hot sunlight, and this can prevent sunlight from warming up a room too much in spring or summer and thus reduce strain on the air conditioning. Conversely, in winter, drapes can help keep a room warm and prevent warm air from leaking through glass. And a homeowner can always hire crews to install spray foam insulation in the walls or attic to prevent temperature loss there, too.

The heating or cooling system itself may need work. Crews can clean out machinery such as the blower fans or the outdoor AC uni8t and get them back in working order, and they can also replace worn-out blower fans or repair or replace damaged sections of the air ducts and clear out animal nests. If the heating and cooling system is very old, it should be replaced entirely, since it’s more liable to break down. A newer system will not only be clean and more powerful, but it will also meet current standards for energy efficiency, too.