Air Conditioning & Heating Blog | Articles, Updates, News & More

Questions to Ask Yourself When Getting a New Central AC

December 13th, 2021

A new AC installation in St. Petersburg, FL can be a big deal for your house. We live in a warm and humid climate where air conditioners are essential almost year-round. When you’re planning on getting a new air conditioner, either to replace an older one or as the first AC for a house, you don’t want to rush into grabbing just anything. We recommend you start working early with our technicians so we can assist you with selecting the unit to meet your needs. We’re here to do more than just put the new AC in place—we want to see you have the right cooling that will last for years and help you lower energy costs.

As you start the process of getting a new air conditioner, ask yourself the following questions. They’ll help you focus on what you need the most from your new cooling system.

How Your Home’s Ducts Can Suffer Damage

November 15th, 2021

Indoor air quality is a major concern for many homeowners, and helping people to improve their indoor air quality is one of our major concerns as well. We offer numerous ways to help improve a home’s air, such as installing a dehumidifier or air purifier in Dunedin, FL.

But often the biggest opponent of enjoying fresh, healthy, and humidity-balanced air is damaged ductwork. Leaky ducts are tricky because they hide out of sight, creating problems people may attribute to other sources. In fact, people are often unaware of the many ways their ducts can become damaged. As you’ll find out below, your ducts have several enemies that can harm them and end up affecting your HVAC system and indoor air quality…

How You Can Help a Struggling Air Conditioner

November 1st, 2021

One of the difficulties we face with air conditioners in Florida is that they don’t get lengthy breaks. The standard for air conditioners in most of the country is a steady summer of use, shorter periods of use in spring and fall, and then a winter where they may not turn on at all. But we need to have our ACs ready to work all through the year, and this means they take on a lot more stress.

As winter gets nearer, you may run into an air conditioner that’s starting to struggle to keep the house cool on warm days. This might be the result of the strain on the air conditioner, or it could be a malfunction. We’ll look at what you can do when you have an AC that isn’t living up to expectations.

Your Heat Pump Needs Maintenance in Fall as Well as Spring

October 18th, 2021

A Florida winter isn’t as intimidating a prospect as, say, a Wisconsin winter. We experience mild cool weather and rain, and the occasional days when people need jackets. Our climate is one of the reasons that heat pumps are such popular options for local home comfort: a heat pump operates as a powerful air conditioning system during much of the year, but it can also manage heating without much trouble when the outdoor temperatures aren’t too low. A heat pump is a great all-seasons comfort system for Florida.

If you use a heat pump for your house, we have an important reminder: schedule maintenance for the heat pump this fall. People often forget to have this done because they assume a heat pump only needs maintenance once a year in spring. After all, air conditioning systems only need maintenance in spring. But even though heat pumps resemble air conditioners in how they run, they have different maintenance requirements.

Why Might an AC Lose Refrigerant?

October 4th, 2021

Refrigerant is a chemical blend that can easily shift between liquid and gaseous states. This makes it ideal for air conditioning systems: as the refrigerant moves through the air conditioner, it evaporates indoors to absorb heat and then condenses outdoors to release heat. During this process, the refrigerant never dissipates—the same amount of refrigerant should stay in the AC for the entire life of the cooling system.

But … leaks can happen. An air conditioner won’t lose refrigerant over time (this is a common misconception) unless it has leaks along its refrigerant lines or at connection points. To prevent the AC from failing due to low refrigerant, experts must locate the leaks, seal them, and then put back in the amount of refrigerant that was lost.

If you’re curious about how these leaks start and if you can do anything to prevent them, follow us below for more information.

Your AC Probably Isn’t Enough to Beat the High Humidity

September 20th, 2021

Imagine how much easier it would be to have a cool, comfortable house in Florida if our humidity wasn’t so high. Humidity doesn’t make the air hotter but certainly makes our bodies feel hotter because it traps heat. Humidity is like putting on a coat in the middle of July.

But your air conditioning system can take care of it, right? Well, probably not. An air conditioner cools the air in your house, but when it comes to humidity, well … let’s talk about that more below.

Can My Air Conditioner Rust?

September 6th, 2021

Any metal that comes into contact with water in the presence of oxygen can rust. So the short answer to the question in the title is, yes. Rust on an AC is more likely to happen in a place like coastal Florida because of our high humidity and the amount of salt in the air. The outdoor components of your home’s air conditioning system are in regular contact with moisture and salt, and this can lead to parts of it rusting.

The good news is that AC manufacturers build their systems to resist rust for many years. It can still occur, however, and we’re going to take a look at what can happen when you’ve got a rusty AC and what you can do about it.

A Bad Thermostat vs. Your AC: What Can Go Wrong

August 23rd, 2021

When Thermostats Go Bad!

Sounds a touch dramatic, but we want to make a point about how important your home’s thermostat is for the overall operation of your HVAC system. The thermostat affects comfort, energy consumption, and the health of the AC and heater. Thermostat problems often look like other HVAC troubles, and it takes a skilled professional to make an accurate diagnosis of the malfunction and fix it.

We’ve listed below ways a thermostat can malfunction and how it affects your house and AC (as well as the general HVAC system).

Should I Get a Bigger Air Conditioner for My Home?

August 9th, 2021

Earlier this year, we wrote a post about the cooling limits of an air conditioning system in a home. This is called the temperature differential of an AC, which is how much the air conditioner can lower the indoor temperature compared to the outside. The temperature differential for residential ACs is 20°F.

Of course, this doesn’t mean every air conditioner can work the same for every house. A small air conditioner may be able to lower the temperature by 20°F, but for only a limited area. This is the air conditioner’s capacity, which is separate from the temperature differential. The capacity of an air conditioner is how many BTUs of heat it can remove from a house in an hour. For example, a small window AC can remove about 5,000 BTUs/hour from a space, but this is only enough to cool down a single room. Larger central ACs can remove 12,000 to 60,000 BTUs/hour.

What a “Split System” Air Conditioner Is

July 26th, 2021

One of the best friends your house can have is central air conditioning in Tampa, FL for the hot summers. You only have to make an adjustment to the thermostat, and cool and refreshing air begins to move through the ducts to the rooms. Easy and convenient—and hard to imagine getting through a summer without one.

The type of central air conditioner that your home probably uses is called a split system. You may have heard this term used, or heard about an alternative called mini splits, and wondered what those terms specifically mean. We’re going to give you a basic rundown on split systems and what makes other ACs different.