Useful Info if You’re in the Market for a Central Air Conditioner This Summer

May 3, 2012 By chris

Have you been thinking of having central air conditioning installed, but just haven’t known where to start, or what to look for? You’re not alone. I hear it from customers all the time, phrases like “sorry if this is a dumb question,” or “this may sound stupid, but…”

It’s not a dumb question, and no, it doesn’t sound stupid. I don’t expect people to know the ins and outs of their heating and cooling system, EVEN THOUGH IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THEIR HOME! I kid, but no really, it is a very vital part of the home, so it is important to have a basic understanding of what to look for in a heating and cooling system, and the steps that a good heating and air conditioning contractor will follow in the design and installation of your new system.

The Consultation and Design Process

This is where the size and type of the system to be installed is determined. When a comfort consultant comes to your home, they should be performing several tasks to ensure the proper system is selected.

The first step is to assess the existing system. It needs to be determined that the existing ductwork can handle the output of the heating and/or air conditioning system that is to be installed. An assessment of the supply (air blowing into the home) and return (air being pulled back through the system) ducts in the home will tell us how much air the ductwork can handle, and if any improvements such as duct sealing, insulation, or adding a duct run or two should be made. Often the return in the home is undersized which can have a very negative impact on system performance, and drastically reduce the life of your system.

The next step is to do a Manual J load calculation on the home. Manual J is the HVAC industry standard for load calculations. The process includes measuring the total cubic footage of the home, and inputting factors such as insulation values, (floor, ceiling, walls) window and door sizes, and the direction that each exterior wall and window faces. The Manual J program has weather data for different cities built in, so when you select a city near the home you are calculating, it calculates the size of the system needed based on all the factors you input, and the local weather data. For example, if we are sizing a central air conditioner in Salem, OR. the design temperature is 88°. This is the only way to be accurate when determining the proper size of your new heating and/or air conditioning system. If the contractor you invite into your home simply asks the square footage of the home, and when you tell him he says “looks like you need a 3 ton air conditioner,” then you can decide at that point if you would like to leave your comfort for the next 15 to 20 years to chance.

Now that the size of the system has been determined, we are down to choosing the right system. I usually like to give a homeowner three options to choose from. We now know what the needs of the home are, so letting the customer decide what system fits their needs and wants becomes the priority. I will give the pros and cons of each option, so that the customer can make an educated decision. There are many different features available in heating and air conditioning systems, so it’s important to do a little bit of research. Clicking on any of our installation photos from this link, https://cleanenergycomfort.com/job-site-photos/ will take you to an information page about that product, and you can learn some of the features and benefits there. Once you have the options laid out in front of you, the choice is yours to make.

Installation and Follow Up

The installation of your new heating and/or air conditioning system is the most important part of the process. I am frequently asked which brands of equipment are the best, and while Rheem, which is our brand of choice, was ranked #1 in reliability by Consumer Reports, if the system is not installed properly, then you will have issues no matter what brand of system you choose. When a new central air conditioner is being installed, the installer should be purging the refrigerant lines with nitrogen while welding. Once the lines are welded the system is put under a deep vacuum to remove any internal air and moisture which will allow the system to operate properly. After the vacuum stage is complete, the system is started and tested to determine if it has the proper refrigerant charge. Refrigerant is either added or removed from the system, or left alone if it’s right on, and whala, you have a finished air conditioning system that will keep you comfortable all Summer long. After your system is operating properly, we like to do a post installation walk through to make sure that everything went as planned, and that you understand how to operate your new system. At this time, any rebate paperwork that needs to be signed is taken care of, and we will discuss the importance of maintaining your new heating and cooling system to keep it operating efficiently for years to come. In the office we register the warranty for your new system, and send off any applicable rebate applications.

The purchase of a new heating and air conditioning system for your home should not be taken lightly. It is probably going to be one of the biggest investments you will make in your biggest investment (your home). I hope that this information will help you if and when you decide it’s time to have that new system installed. If you have any further questions, or would like more information on the subject, please feel free to contact us.

Cool Products For Your Heating and Cooling System

March 2, 2012 By chris

Most people aren’t aware of just how many different accessory products are available for a heating and cooling system, whether it be related to safety and health, comfort, energy savings, or just ease of operation. Let’s touch on a few of these products.

Health & Safety Products

Carbon monoxide detectors are becoming more and more popular. On April 1 of 2011 in Oregon, ORS 476.725 went into effect stating that carbon monoxide detectors must be installed in any home that contains a Carbon Monoxide (CO) producing appliance, or that has an attached garage where CO may enter the home from a car running in the garage. What appliances produce CO? Pretty much any gas or oil burning appliance, a furnace, water heater, gas range, or even a wood burning fireplace. The law states that single family residences are required to have a working CO detector in, or within 15′ of any bedroom at the time of sale or rental. Unintentional CO exposure accounts for an estimated 15,000 ER visits, and approximately 500 deaths each year in the US. – Center for Disease Control. This is a very important product to help keep your family safe from this silent killer.

Duct mounted smoke detectors can be easily installed on your ductwork, and include a tube that enters the duct, and will sense smoke being pulled through the ductwork. Once smoke is sensed by the detector, it will turn your furnace off to avoid circulating the smoke throughout the entire home. You can incorporate an alarm into this setup, but the biggest benefit of this product is the avoided smoke damage that even the smallest of kitchen fires could cause if allowed to be circulated through the ductwork with the force of the furnace fan.

Ultra violet light can be installed on your heating and cooling system, and is very effective at maintaining healthy air in the home. There are many good air filtration systems available, but the downfall with most of them is their inability to kill the particles they trap, and therefore those particles may be disbursed into the duct system again. The UV light will kill mold spores and bacteria, and stop them from reproducing. Ductwork is a breeding ground for these organisms, and the UV light will keep your lungs from taking the abuse.

Energy Savings and Comfort

Now that we’re through all the boring safety stuff, we can focus on the cool gadgets that are available. The most exciting control system available right now is the Prestige HD thermostat from Honeywell. Honeywell has developed a thermostat that will open eyes, and broaden your abilities to control your heating and cooling system. This thermostat has a full color display, and when equipped with the optional wireless outdoor temperature sensor, will also display outdoor temperature and humidity. The stat incorporates an interview based programming method, and will ask you questions about your schedule for each day of the week, to determine optimum programming settings for increased comfort and energy savings. Filter change and maintenance reminders can also be easily set up, so that you don’t let that all too easy to forget, and yet so important, furnace be neglected. That is the basic operation of the stat, but the really cool part is the options available.

There is an optional Portable Comfort Control, which is a remote that you can take with you anywhere in the house, and you can not only control the system from there, but if you want, you can even have the temperature sensed from there. For example, if you are spending the day in a TV room watching movies, and you want that room to maintain 70 degrees, you simply take the remote with you, push the button to sense from the remote, and your heating and cooling system will work to achieve 70 degrees in that room.

If being able to control your system from any room in your home isn’t enough, what about being able to control it from anywhere in the world? The Internet Gateway from Honeywell plugs into your wireless router, and can wirelessly communicate between your laptop, desktop, phone, or iPad. You can control the temperature manually, set up a new program, and also monitor the system. Honeywell monitors the system as well, with no monthly fees. Sensors get installed in the ductwork that read temperature on the supply and return side of your heating and cooling system. If the difference between the two sensors increases or decreases indicating a problem with the heating and cooling system, then emails will get sent to up to 5 emails of your choice. If you have your email in the system along with the email of your heating contractor, then if there is a problem, your heating contractor can be arranging a service call, and contacting you, whereas before you would have to come home to a cold house, and probably pay after hours rates to have it fixed. The Internet Gateway can be especially useful in a vacation home. How nice would it be to bump up the heat when you or a renter are on your way to the home, and oh, if you got half way back home and it clicked with you that you forgot to turn down the thermostat, no problem. Just hop online.

These are just a few of the many products available that can be added to any heating and cooling system at anytime. If you have any questions on these or any other products of interest, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help.

What to look for in a new furnace

November 13, 2011 By chris

In the market for a new furnace?

So you’re in the market for a new furnace, but you’re not quite sure what features you should be looking for. To answer this, look within. Within your home that is.

The first, most obvious place to start is with the type of fuel you are using to heat your home. Do you currently have a gas, oil, or electric furnace? Most homes are heated with one of these. Now just because you have one of these types of furnaces, doesn’t mean you need to stick with it. With the cost of heating oil these days, and no real high efficiency options in the oil furnace category, you are probably better off switching to a heat pump system, and either keeping the oil as back up for temperatures below 35, or going heat pump with electric back up.

If you are currently heating your home with natural gas, you have many more options available to you. Gas furnaces of today range anywhere from 80% to 95% efficient, with some furnaces up in the 98% efficient range. What does this mean? An 80% efficient furnace will provide $8 worth of heat for every $10 of natural gas purchased. A 95% efficient furnace will provide $9.50 of heat for every $10 of natural gas. The fuel which is burned, but not converted to heat in the house is expelled as exhaust through a flue pipe. Over time, having a furnace that is providing you with an extra $1.50 worth of heat for every $10 spent will certainly pay off. Now that we’ve established efficiency ranges as far as fuel utilization, let’s focus on the function of the equipment. We provide service throughout the Willamette Valley of Oregon, from Portland to Corvallis. Our climate is fairly mild throughout the year, however we do experience some extreme temperatures in both the Summer and Winter. We have to size a system for these extremes, so that you can remain comfortable when you most need to be, but that means that majority of the time your system will be over sized. This means that the system will satisfy the set point on the thermostat much quicker than it should. That may seem like a good thing, but if the system doesn’t run long enough to evenly heat the home, then the thermostat will quickly be calling for the system to kick right back on. This continuous condition is known as short cycling. Short cycling will lead to unbalanced temperatures, higher utility costs, and a shorter life expectancy for the equipment. Some national surveys have determined that more than half of the systems in homes today are not properly sized, and the majority of those are over sized. So how do we solve this problem? First, we start by performing a load calculation on your home to determine what size system we need to install to heat and cool your home under design temperature load for our area. That is only part of the equation though, because design temperature in the Portland area is 24 degrees, so when the temperatures are more mild, the system would still be over sized. The load calculation though, at least gives us a baseline, and eliminates drastically over or under sizing. So in order to meet demands of the more extreme temperatures, but also maintain consistent temperatures throughout the home on more mild days, without short cycling, we introduce multi-stage equipment. Huh? There are furnaces available today that have two or more stages of heat they can operate at. Most two stage furnaces available can either deliver 100% capacity, or can scale back to around 65% capacity when the full force of the furnace is not needed. To take this a step further, Rheem has been manufacturing a modulating furnace for over ten years now. This furnace can deliver a range from 40% capacity to 100% in increments of 5%. This allows the furnace to always deliver just the right amount of heat to maintain temperature in the home. This makes for a very comfortable home, and a very payable utility bill. The other component to multi-stage furnaces to look for is a variable speed fan. These fans will vary the airflow based on the heat the furnace is delivering. If you run your fan constantly, or have air conditioning, the variable speed fan will drastically cut your electricity bill as well.

The variable speed fans operate at about 1/3 the cost of a standard, single speed fan. If you are heating your home with an electric furnace, then I would strongly recommend having a heat pump installed. The variable speed fans are available in electric furnaces as well, and when paired with a heat pump, can be the most efficient way to heat and cool a home in the Willamette Valley. The multi-stage technology is available in heat pumps as well. The compressor on a two stage heat pump is capable of operating at two different settings whether in heating or cooling mode. This makes for a very comfortable and efficient home year around. Ductless heat pumps have taken this to a whole other level with variable capacity compressors that have a very wide range of operation. If you currently heat with electric baseboard, cadet heat, or ceiling cable heat, then a ductless heat pump is a very cost effective way to drastically lower your utility costs. Ductless heat pumps have been known to cut utility costs nearly in half for people who heat with the aforementioned types of electric heat. They will also provide air conditioning, and since no ductwork is needed, they can usually be installed in one day.

The process of selecting a new furnace, and a contractor to install it can be a daunting task, so hopefully this information will help you choose. The bottom line is that the contractor should be helping to customize a system based on the features that are important to you. These conclusions can only be made by a series of questions and answers, so start thinking about what you would like to get out of a new system. It is no small investment, but if done right, can truly be an investment, and not just another cost. If you are located within our service territory in the Willamette Valley, please press the “Need Comfort” button below, fill out the online form, and we will contact you for your no cost comfort consultation. Or if you would prefer, just give us a call. Thank you!

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Will a ductless heat pump work in my home?

August 19, 2011 By chris

Mitsubishi Wall Mounted Unit

If you’re wondering whether or not a ductless heat pump will work in your home, the answer is more than likely yes. With the wide variety of indoor options available, ductless heat pumps have become adaptable to almost any situation. While the most common type of indoor unit remains the wall mounted style, the use of alternative units such as concealed, ducted units, and low floor mount units are on the rise. The fact of the matter is that all homes are different, as are the people who live in them, and they all have different needs. The use of these alternative indoor units in conjunction with the standard wall mounted ductless units, allow for much more flexibility in the design process. For example, if you live in a 1,600 square foot home with a fairly wide open main living space, but the bedrooms are isolated from the rest of the house, you could potentially feed the main area with a wall mounted unit or two, and then install a concealed ducted unit, such as the one pictured below, in the attic or crawl space that could feed some short duct runs into the bedrooms.

Mitsubishi ducted indoor unit

One area where ductless heat pumps can really have a huge impact on livability of a space is in the upstairs of older homes that never had ductwork ran to them, or were converted from attics. A lot of times in these houses, the ceiling follows the pitch of the roof, and the attic knee walls of the upstairs are very short. In this scenario, a floor standing unit works great. The wall mounted units work best when you can get them up at a higher level in the room, but when you don’t have the luxury of installing the unit up high, the floor standing unit is the answer. The floor standing unit, as pictured below can be used in multi-zone applications only.

Mitsubishi Floor Standing Indoor Unit

Ductless heat pumps have had a tremendous impact on the heating and air conditioning industry in the last five years, and with the continued developments in the product line, they are definitely here to stay. So, no matter if you currently have baseboard heat in your home, and want a more efficient heating system along with air conditioning, or if you have a bonus room you would like to heat and cool without affecting the rest of your home, or if your upstairs is unusable because it gets too hot, chances are that a ductless heat pump system could be just what you’re looking for.

Salem:

503-304-1320

Portland:

503-982-6082