Maximize Efficiency of Your Home Heating and Cooling Systems

When it comes to your home heating and cooling systems, comfort, efficiency, and affordability are all things any homeowner must consider. Of those three, efficiency tops the list because it affects the other two. After all, if your furnace or air conditioning unit does not work well, you will have a hard time maintaining proper temperature inside your home and your utility bills will skyrocket.

The number of way to maximize efficiency for the heating and cooling systems in your home is to choose the right unit, installation company, and maintenance team from the start. If you currently have an older or non-environmentally friendly heating and cooling system, upgrading is your best bet for maximizing efficiency.

Residential Heating and Cooling Systems

Even with the most efficient furnace and AC, there are still things that improve overall efficiency to keep your family and guests comfortable and minimize your monthly bills.

Choose a Programmable Thermostat

Why heat or cool the air in your home when no one is around to enjoy it? Excessive use of your home heating and cooling systems is one of the biggest energy and money wasters. With a programmable thermostat, you only use it when you need it, and you never forget to adjust the temperature at night or when you are out of the house.

Check for Air and Humidity Leaks

Anywhere air or moisture can leak into or out of the home presents an opportunity for the heated or cooled air to escape, too. Although you could replace your windows and doors for maximum efficiency, ceiling any gaps or using weatherstripping can help. Your residential heating and cooling systems will not have to work as hard to maintain a comfortable and healthy temperature.

Improve Home Insulation

Although this is one of the more costly changes to maximize HVAC efficiency, it is also the most effective in many cases. Insufficient insulation leads to a lot of energy loss through your house walls and roof. The HVAC units do not have to work as hard if the warm or cool air they produce stays inside the house.

Use Window Treatments Wisely

One way many homeowners challenge the efficiency of their heating and AC units is by allowing outside conditions and the sun specifically to counteract their function. For example, if you leave your blinds and curtains wide open on a very sunny day, all the heat from the sun would stream inside your house. This makes it difficult for your air conditioner to operate efficiently. Likewise, in the coldest part of the winter when interior heat leaches out through the windows, makes sense to cover them with insulating curtains or shades.

When you choose the best heating and cooling systems for your home from a reputable company like Earth Energy Systems, you know you are getting the most efficient options possible. However, when you use the methods listed above to maximize HVAC unit efficiency, you can enjoy a more eco-friendly and affordable home all year round.

Understand the Basics of your Home Heating and Cooling System

It’s easy to take for granted our home heating and cooling systems. They operate pretty unobtrusively and do their jobs efficiently when installed by a professional. We don’t even notice their existence until something goes wrong and our home becomes very uncomfortable.

Oftentimes the first step in repair or assessing the need for repair is a simple understanding of how your system works, how to relay to problem effectively to your heating and cooling specialist, and could even include a simple solution that you, the homeowner, can tackle yourself with a good set of instructions.

Let’s break down the parts of a few typical systems and give you a basic understanding of what’s happening in home heating and cooling systems.

Source

Your source is either your furnace (or another heating component) or your air conditioner. Oftentimes, these use the same means of distribution, such as in a forced air system when both heating and cooling systems utilize shared ductwork to regulate temperature.

Every source of your home heating and cooling systems burns energy in order to function. That could be gas, electricity, wood, etc. But energy is necessary to run the system. Knowing which form of energy is powering your system will help you to better understand how it’s functioning.

Distribution

Forced air systems: An electric blower (fan) pushes hot or cold air throughout your home via metal ducts. Returns (part of the ductwork) allow for air to be redistributed and heated or cooled again depending upon settings.

Gravity systems: These make use of the science of hot air rising and cool air dropping. By that rule, gravity systems cannot distribute cool air from an air conditioner. The furnace is located below or at ground level and the warmed air rises from it throughout the home via ducts and the cool air sinks to be reheated.

Radiant systems: Radiant systems utilize heated water kept in a boiler to warm the home. The hot water is distributed via pipes through the house (the type and age of the system dictate how heat is eventually distributed) and warms the home. The air contacting the heated radiator/convector/floor is warmed and eventually warms the entire room and home.

Regulation

Your thermostat regulates the temperature in your home. It’s a heat sensitive switch controlled by bimetallic elements responding to temperature changes in your home. If you have a newer thermostat, it could be controlled by solid-state elements as well.

If any of these pieces of the heating and cooling system puzzle are still a complete mystery to you, pleasecontact us at Earth Energyand we can help you better understand your home heating and cooling systems.