Whether you have just one air conditioner in your home or an entire central air cooling system, you can look for contractors to help with cleaning, maintaining, and ensuring you are saving as much energy when you are using your air conditioner or the entire unit as well.
Cleaning and replacing your filters each month furnace repair brooklyn will help to maintain your air conditioning unit. HVAC maintenance also includes getting an annual tune up from a professional service or contractor to ensure your air conditioning unit’s equipment is up to par and is not leaking or causing an over usage of energy use in your home. If you are not sure how to install and replace the filters in your air conditioner, you can refer to the user manual of your unit or call a professional contractor or service to help you with the installation and replacement of the new filters your unit requires.
Before working with a professional for your HVAC maintenance or even repairs, make a list of all of the concerns you may have with your unit, including any questions regarding the air conditioners filters, output of energy, or even the programmed thermostat you are using to work the unit. Asking questions will allow you to get the answers you need when you are working with a certified professional.
It is important to ensure your home is thoroughly insulated, including your attic as well. Close off cracks under doors and within door frames to help with keeping the cool air in your home, requiring less usage and electricity from the air conditioner. You should also consider keeping your air conditioner set at one temperature as much as possible to reduce spikes and fluctuations in your electric and gas bill monthly.
Set your home’s thermostat to an overall higher temperature when you are not at home or off at work for the day to save on energy use when you do not need the air conditioning. Also, opt for a programmable thermostat when you are trying to save money on your electric bill while also reducing your energy usage, as it will be a more accurate way to track your home’s temperature and the amount of energy you are using regularly.
Consider turning off your unit when there is a calming breeze or mild temperatures outside, instead opening your windows and saving on the energy costs each month. You can also save on energy usage by closing off specific ducts in your home to concentrate the air conditioning into specific locations. This will allow you to cool other rooms quicker, needing less air conditioning or allowing you to keep the air conditioner set a bit higher without feeling too hot or uncomfortable.
When you want to look for air conditioning services, you can do so by searching locally and comparing air conditioning contractors and also by browsing right from home, online. Seeking air conditioning services online allows you to compare local businesses and air conditioning contractors to find the best professional team to work with, based on the work you need done and the budget you have available to spend on hiring a company to help.
In hot places, it becomes necessary to cool the inside of buildings. Modern buildings have refrigeration systems, commonly referred to as air conditioning or AC for short. An alternate system of cooling is a swamp cooler. Although it sounds primitive, a swamp cooler can be effective, and is almost always much cooler to run than an air conditioning unit.
Swamp coolers were developed, not in swampy areas, but in the desert. Rick Goettl, in the early 20th century, perfected home cooling in the southwestern desert of Arizona. Although the company would later move to become a major Phoenix air conditioning supplier, they started with swamp coolers. These worked well in the hot, dry air in ways that they would never have worked in the Midwest or Deep South.
Swamp coolers work by the principle of evaporation. When water evaporates it uses heat energy to change state from liquid to gas. Much like boiling water requires heat, evaporating require heat. This heat is drawn from the surrounding air. A swamp cooler is a large box with sponge-like pads lining three sides and the top. A large fan forms the fourth side. The floor of the cooler is a catch pan for water, which is introduced at the top of the pads. Water runs down the walls, keeping the pads saturated. Air flows through the walls of the cooler, through the wet pads, and out through the fan, into the room. On a dry day, the water in the pads evaporates quickly, keeping the pads and air quite cold. On a humid day, the water in the pads does not evaporate well, and the result is that the cooler only lowers the temperature slightly, while humidifying the room.
Air conditioning works on a completely different scientific principle, that of Boyle’s gas law. Increasing the pressure of gas in a chamber will raise the temperature, if the volume of the chamber stays the same or decreases. Decreasing the pressure will decrease the temperature. This is why a child’s balloon feels cold immediately after it is deflated, and why a bike pump will get warm if the tire is inflated quickly.
An air conditioning unit uses a fluid such as Freon that has a boiling point close to the ambient temperature of a room. A compressor pressurizes Freon gas, raising the temperature. The hot gas then runs through a condenser, which is like a radiator, and allows heat to escape into the surrounding air (this part of the unit is outside the building). As the pressurized gas cools, it condenses back to a liquid. Now, it is at high pressure, but room temperature. The liquid passes through an expansion valve, which lowers the pressure, resulting in a cold mixture of liquid and gas. This cold mixture runs through an evaporator, which is like a radiator, but working in reverse. As warm air from the room blows over the cold coils, the fluid in the coils turns to warm gas, and the air is cooled and returned to the room via a duct. The warm Freon then returns to the compressor, and the cycle starts over.
In addition to cooling the air in a room, an air conditioning unit also lowers the humidity. This is because as warm air from the room runs past the cold evaporator coils, moisture from the air condenses on the coils, much like water condenses on a cold glass on a hot day.
The Freon compressor requires a lot of power, in addition to the power necessary to run the fans that blow air over the evaporator and condenser. This means that an air conditioning unit is much more expensive to operate than a swamp cooler. But an air conditioning unit can operate and cool a room even when the air is humid, while a swamp cooler relies on dry air to operate effectively.
