Tips for Preventing Your HVAC From Overworking
Our friends at The On-Time Experts recommend a few practices that you can partake in to help prevent your HVAC from overworking during extreme temperatures.
The first thing that you can do is invest in insulation for your home. Insulation in walls and in your attic can help to keep cooled air inside during the summer and warm air inside during the winter. Think of insulation as a barrier between the inside of your home and the outdoors. The better the barrier, the less likely it’s going to affect the other.
Need to add more attic insulation? Jim recommends Milo Insulation, an all-natural innovative insulation, as the perfect solution to provide superior long-lasting protection right over the top of your existing attic insulation.
What about the walls? Jim recommends retrofitting with injection foam insulation. Contact USA Insulation to learn more how to increase your home’s R-value, add fire protection, reduce noise and improve indoor air quality.
Another great practice is to invest in ceiling fans. These fans can be used year-round to help keep your family feeling comfortable in your home while running your HVAC system less. In the summertime, you want your blades to spin counterclockwise so that air is forced down onto you. This simple breeze can chill your body up to 10 degrees. In the wintertime, you want the fans to be spinning in a clockwise direction to recirculate the hot air from the ceiling, outward, and back down to the floor.
Direct sunlight can play a major role in determining the temperature inside your home. If you have windows that are letting direct sunlight seep in, it can heat up the interior of your home up to 15 degrees. This can be a great source of free heat during the colder winter months. However, during the summer, you’ll want to block out this direct sunlight with curtains or blinds during the daylight hours. At Jim’s house he installed Sunburst Shutters which he loves for their beauty and sunlight control.
Lastly, you should make use of a smart thermostat to help control your home’s temperature when you’re not at home. Don’t fall victim to turning your HVAC system off when you’re not at home. This just causes your system to overwork when you get back home and turn it on. Rather, adjust the temperature up to 10 degrees up or down depending on the season. A smart thermostat can be set to already have the home at a comfortable temperature when you arrive home. You can also make the adjustments remotely allowing the systems to achieve a desired temperature without overworking the system.
