Great Ideas About Hvac That Anyone Can Use
Hiring an HVAC professional to either replace old heating and cooling equipment or install a brand new unit is something with which not every homeowner is entirely comfortable. The best way to confront this type of challenge is to gain some great tips and tricks. The article below should serve that purpose quite nicely.
If you want to keep your air conditioning unit running efficiently, make sure you replace or clean the air filter once a month. Check the owner's manual on the a/c for instructions on how to clean the filter. Never run the unit when the filter is removed and let the filter dry before reinstallling it.
If you do have a good experience with a HVAC product or contractor, let others know. Go online and post a review so that people can easily find out who and what brands to trust. At the same time, you can check reviews online to learn more yourself about what's available.
Clean your permanent air filters or replace disposable ones every single month. If you have the choice, an electrostatic is the best option on the market today. Be sure to turn off your unit before you change the filter as it should never be run without a filter in place.
The correct HVAC system should have sealed air ducts to minimize heating or cooling loss as air travels to different rooms. The heating or cooling requirements of different rooms in the home should be taken into consideration. There is no reason to increase energy usage by controlling the temperature in rooms that are used very little.
Clean your permanent air filters or replace disposable ones every single month. If you have the choice, an electrostatic is the best option on the market today. Be sure to turn off your unit before you change the filter as it should never be run without a filter in place.
The correct HVAC system should have sealed air ducts to minimize heating or cooling loss as air travels to different rooms. The heating or cooling requirements of different rooms in the home should be taken into consideration. There is no reason to increase energy usage by controlling the temperature in rooms that are used very little.
If you have a window air conditioner, be sure to check and see if it has an Energy Saver button. If so, use it! This turns off the fan when the unit isn't actually website cooling the air, which can save you as much as 30 kwh over the period of a month!
Consider an annual service agreement for technicians to regularly inspect your AC unit. Schedule brief inspections for the winter to make sure nothing is obviously wrong. The most important time for an inspection and service is just before it starts getting warm. You don't want to discover an AC breakdown when you need it working most.
Always ask for references before you allow anyone to start doing work on your HVAC system. Call several of them to make sure that they are legitimate. Many people take the word of the contractor when it comes to customer satisfaction and that can prove to be a mistake in the end.
If you have known the frustration of an HVAC failure, you know that one of the best things you can do as a homeowner is acquaint yourself with a skilled contractor. However, knowing what to look for in an HVAC professional takes a bit of research and study. Use the advice found above, and you will always be prepared for anything.
Can the AC filter in your home, office or local mall protect you from Covid-19?
When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last week that malls in New York could not reopen until they installed high-efficiency particulate air filters capable of trapping the virus that causes Covid-19, Harvard environmental health researcher Joseph Gardner Allen was thrilled.
"I've been writing consistently since early February about how healthy buildings should be the first line of defense against the novel coronavirus," said Allen, who directs the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
"I'm really grateful that we have a leader in the country -- somewhere -- who was finally talking about healthy buildings, ventilation and filtration," Allen said. "That hasn't happened before. It just hasn't happened."
A push to action
Allen was one of 239 scientists who wrote an open letter to the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies, asking for a change in their guidance to the public on how the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, can spread.
Current guidance only focuses on "hand washing, maintaining social distancing, and droplet precautions," according to the letter, published Monday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The health agencies are ignoring the tiny droplets of virus that sputter and spray from our mouths, become aerosolized and then float away into the air, the scientists said, as a likely means of transmission.
"They don't want to talk about airborne transmission because that is going to make people afraid," co-author Donald Milton, a professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland, told CNN in a prior interview.
"The best vaccine against fear is knowledge and empowering people to take care of themselves," Milton said. "Why wearing a mask is important is because it blocks the aerosols at their source, when it is easy to block them."
MERV ratings
In his edict to New York mall owners, Cuomo was talking about HEPA filters, which have the highest MERV ratings, between 17 and 20.
What's MERV? It stands for "minimum efficiency reporting value," and it's how filters are rated in their ability to trap tiny particles. The MERV ratings go from one to 20: Filters with higher MERV ratings are more effective than filters with lower ratings.
At the highest end, HEPA filters are used by hospitals to create sterile rooms for surgeries and to control infectious diseases, and are able to remove 99.97% of dust, pollen, mold, bacteria and other airborne particles with a size as small as 0.3 microns. For comparison, Covid-19 is thought to be between 0.06 to 1.4 microns.
"Filters are rated at their worst performance, so 99.97% is the worst it will do," Allen said. "And that's rated for a particle size of 0.3 microns, but smaller and larger it actually does better. So the point is that it's capturing nearly all particles."
Unfortunately, most businesses and home owners may find it difficult to retrofit their existing system to accommodate a HEPA filter, or any filter higher than the rating recommended by the system's manufacturer.
Doing so can actually impair the system's performance: Smaller pores in HEPA air filters make it more difficult for it to push air. Using denser filters can affect the efficiency of the unit and strain the fan, while decreasing indoor air quality -- the opposite of what you desire.
"HEPA filtration is not always going to be feasible or practical," Allen said. "But there are other filters that can do the job. What is recommended now by the standard setting body for HVAC is a MERV 13 filter."
High-efficiency filters in the 13-to-16 MERV range are often used in hospitals, nursing homes, research labs and other places where filtration is important.
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