Tips for Your Home
3 Common A/C Issues And What To Do About Them
While today’s central air conditioners offer superior efficiency and reliability, a few common AC issues are still often responsible when problems occur. The average central air conditioner installed today can be expected to provide reliable cooling performance for 12 to 15 years or more with routine annual maintenance. Despite this long service life, however, certain shortfalls may recur that [...]
Troubleshooting Reduced Airflow In Your Home
Is optimum comfort reaching all parts of your home or are ductwork obstructions limiting proper air circulation? To maintain consistent temperatures throughout your house, your HVAC system requires free airflow: The average 1,600 square foot home needs about 1,000 cubic feet per minute of air flowing through the ducts to all rooms. If ductwork obstructions are causing reduced airflow, you’re not [...]
How to Prepare for a New A/C Installation
A new AC installation is a step forward to greater energy efficiency, lower costs and—perhaps best of all—enhanced indoor comfort. The installation process is critical to getting all those benefits you deserve. If installation doesn’t meet standards, the system may not maintain consistent comfort, operating costs may be higher and excessive wear and tear may occur. To help ensure that a new [...]
Thinking Of Adding A Fireplace? 4 Things To Consider...
Fireplace installation isn’t as common in new home construction as they once were. However, the aesthetic appeal of a fireplace as well as as source of winter warmth holds an attraction for many. As a result, adding a fireplace is still a popular option with homeowners. To decide whether adding a fireplace is a good choice for your home, it’s necessary to consider a few important factors b [...]
How A Furnace Inspection Can Save You Money
Saving money isn’t the only benefit of a furnace inspection, but it’s one you’ll appreciate every month when you pay your utility bills. Nationwide, the annual average cost to heat a home with a gas furnace is more than $1,200. Any effective measures you can take to reduce that substantial figure usually pay for themselves in energy savings alone. Of course, an annual furnace inspection also [...]
How To Prevent Dust Invading Your Home
It probably comes as no surprise that there is dust invading your home. The amount, however, is remarkable: Studies have shown that a typical six-room American residence accumulates over 40 pounds of dust every year. Most airborne dust originates inside the house versus from outdoor sources. The diverse list includes carpet fibers, human skin flakes, spores from indoor mold growth, powder from dry [...]
3 Back-To-School Energy Saving Tips
Back-to-school energy savings can be a good opportunity to recoup some of those higher summer costs. There’s no doubt that this time of year is a more moderate energy season here in Ohio. As the daily hours of air conditioning use—a major electrical consumer in most households—began to drop, you’ll get a break in monthly utility bills. Later in the fall, as cooler weather arrives, heating [...]
Carbon Monoxide Detectors: How To Choose
New home owners and those renovating an existing home in Ohio are required to install carbon monoxide detectors if the house has an attached garage or any appliance that uses natural gas such as a stove or gas furnace. Deadly carbon monoxide gas (CO) is a colorless and odorless by-product of combustion of fuels like gasoline, natural gas or even wood in a fireplace. It kills about 500 Americans an [...]
Choosing a Whole House Water Filtration System...
A whole house water filtration system purifies all water entering your home and supplied to every fixture. This important fact distinguishes a whole-house system from individual point-of-use units that filter water at a single tap or fixture only. A whole house water filtration system is also not the same as a water softener. Though the water softening process removes certain minerals from the hou [...]
Is Your Breaker Box Up to Code?
The breaker box in your home divides up the electrical current entering the house into individual circuits protected by circuit breakers. Breaker boxes are rated for a certain maximum amperage. Many boxes in older homes are rated for the electrical demand that was common at the time the house was built. However, as time has passed, everyone knows that household electrical devices have multiplied e [...]
Discover The Impact Ceiling Fans Can Have On Your Energy Bill
Ceiling fans help your air conditioner do what it’s designed to do: make the house more comfortable in summer. However, they do it at less cost than an A/C. Air in motion is one of the secrets to indoor comfort. The slowly rotating blades of a ceiling fan move a large volume of air with very low electrical consumption. Compared to a typical 2.5 ton residential central air conditioner that consum [...]
Using Exterior Lighting To Increase Your Home Security
Exterior lighting makes your home a lot less attractive target to burglars, vandals and trespassers. Most criminals are very risk-averse. There’s simply no reason to take great chances of being detected and caught when there’s almost always an easier, less risky opportunity nearby to exploit, instead. Illuminating the outdoor area surrounding your home raises that risk potential and deters cri [...]
Choosing the Right Fixtures for Your Bathroom Upgrade
When planning your bathroom upgrade, new bathroom fixtures can not only give your bathroom a totally different ambiance, but they can also lower your water bills. Because there are so many options to choose from, it helps to plan ahead. Beautiful, Functional Faucets If you’ll be keeping your current sink cabinet, choose a faucet type that matches the hole openings in the counter. Make sure t [...]
Whole House Generators - Key Things You Need To Know
A whole house generator is rapidly becoming a standard accessory in homes. Weather-related power outages have increased 100 percent since 2003. On an average day, about a half-million people across the country are affected by loss of utility power. Not only are power outages increasing, the typical duration until power is restored is also getting longer. The reason is clear: most of the U.S. power [...]
End of Season AC Maintenance - What You Need to Know
The end of the cooling season doesn’t mean the end of AC maintenance. Before you put your air conditioner to bed for winter, a few simple maintenance tips will help ensure that it’s ready to keep you comfortable when you wake it up again next spring. Seasonal start-up is often the time when system problems occur, often because basic end of season AC maintenance was neglected months ago when th [...]
How to Keep a Lid on Energy Costs This Winter
Whether this winter is severe or something less, efforts to control energy costs will always pay off. Taking proactive control of those factors you can do something about will produce both immediate and long-term benefits. Lower monthly costs, greater indoor comfort and less wear and tear on your heating system are among them. Here are some effective ways to control energy costs this winter: Prog [...]
3 Things to Look For When Comparing Dehumidifiers
Can you maintain proper indoor humidity levels without the use of a dehumidifier? The Environmental Protection Agency recommends keeping household humidity levels below 60% for a healthy, comfortable indoor environment. It’s often a challenge to stay in that recommended range, however, particularly in climates like ours here in southern Ohio, where outdoor humidity often exceeds that limit. In t [...]
Avoid Frozen Pipes - A 3-Step Checklist
Simple steps you can take with drain pipes to avoid frozen pipes can also help prevent the repeated annoyance of a frozen drain. When freezing temperatures persist for a length of time—particularly when they are below 32 degrees Fahrenheit day and night—both water supply lines and drain pipes may freeze. Just as with any other type of drain blockage, a drain pipe that is obstructed by ice will [...]
How to Prepare a Water Heater for Winter
Because this is not the season to be stuck without hot water, take time to properly prepare your water heater for winter. The water heater’s typically the most frequently replaced major appliance in the house. Many last less than 10 years. One of the things that can help extend water heater service life is seasonal maintenance. Here are some suggestions to prepare a water heater for winter and e [...]
What Types of Weatherstripping are Best?
Weatherstripping is one of the household materials that keeps warm air inside in winter and hot air outside in summer. Usually foam, vinyl or rubber, it’s typically installed to close the gap between two moveable surfaces. Weatherstripping is usually found along the edges of a door and the door jamb to form an effective seal against air leakage when the door is closed. It’s also usually pr [...]
