If your heating equipment is aging or struggled to get you through last winter, now’s the time to look into upgrading to a new heating system. It takes time to fully research your options, and if you get started now, you’ll have plenty of time to finish your shopping and have your new furnace installed before the arrival of heating season.
Cutting your home energy bills can be relatively easy to do with a few common-sense practices that almost anybody can do. Below, you will find nine ways to lower your energy bills without a lot of effort.
The Twin Cities cooling season is winding down, and your focus will move from your air conditioner to your furnace. But there’s still plenty of hot days to go before fall, and keeping your air conditioner humming problem-free for the last days of summer and those warm early fall days is a simple matter of some regular DIY maintenance.
One of the key principles of properly working heating and cooling systems is that the home is sealed as well as possible – keeping warm air inside in the winter and outside in the summer. This can unfortunately lead to a real problem with indoor air quality. Adopt this three-step strategy to improve the air you breathe in your home:
Back in the days before smart phones, televisions and automobiles, many people living in cold-winter climates cooled their homes and businesses in the summer with blocks of ice, which was harvested by the ton – millions of tons. In relation to cooling by ice and cooling by modern air conditioning, it takes 286,000 BTUs to melt one ton of ice in 24 hours (12,000 BTUs per hour). Over time, the term “ton” came to represent air conditioner capacity of removing 12,000 BTUs of heat from a given space in one hour, not 2,000 pounds of ice.
Your air conditioner contributes significantly to your summer energy bills. If you’re replacing your air conditioner this season, look for the right advanced A/C features, including a thermal expansion valve, to boost savings without sacrificing comfort.
The air conditioning system in your Twin Cities metro area home uses the principles of refrigeration for transferring heat out of your home and providing cool air to your home, but there’s more to it than that. Learn how your air conditioner keeps your home cool, and you can keep more money in your pocketbook.
Summertime in the Twin Cities metro area can get hot and muggy, and your air conditioner works hard 24/7 to keep you comfortable. If you haven’t scheduled your annual air conditioning maintenance yet, there’s still time to get the benefits of a comprehensive tune-up:
Having an oversized air conditioner is an all too common problem, especially if your home is an older one. Before homes were built to the higher energy-efficiency standards that now exist, they required larger equipment because their cooling loads were higher. However, if you have improved your home’s airtightness and insulation over the years, you likely now have too large a cooling system.
Summer is in full swing in the Twin Cities metro area, and you’re probably looking for ways to lower your energy bills while maintaining optimum comfort. An overworked air conditioner becomes less efficient over time and may experience common A/C problems resulting from hard work and neglect. Optimize the cooling in your home to take some of the load off your air conditioner with these tips.
