Posts

Residential HVAC Best Practices

/in /by

A heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system represents a substantial capital investment for your family, so it’s critical that you get the most value from your HVAC budget. Whether you’re in the process of planning a new HVAC installation, or you’re looking for ways to optimize the performance of an existing system, following these three residential HVAC best practices to ensure your system is prepared to serve your family for years to come.

Correctly Size Equipment

HVAC equipment is designed and optimized with specific heating and cooling loads in mind. Ensuring your infrastructure is built to maintain ideal temperatures for the size of your home is critical to getting the maximum value from your system. While undersizing equipment may save you money upfront, your HVAC system will struggle to maintain an ideal temperature and end up running more frequently than it should. That ultimately leads to premature equipment failure and higher energy costs.

At the same time, oversized equipment generally costs more to purchase and operate, so while it won’t have to work as hard to maintain a specific temperature, you end up paying for more than you need. Whether you’re retrofitting existing equipment, or you’re deploying a new system, check that your residential HVAC contractor makes the necessary load calculations to size a system that’s optimized for your home.

Optimize Ductwork

Even with the latest HVAC equipment, your system will underperform if air is running through old, inefficient ducts. Taking the time to ensure air ducts are properly sealed and insulated can quickly pay for itself by saving you money on energy bills. Plus, your system won’t have to work as hard to heat and cool your home. By ensuring proper airflow throughout your home, you’re not only creating a more comfortable environment year-round; you’re also maximizing indoor air quality.

Prioritize Ongoing Maintenance

In an ideal world, you’d be able to install an HVAC system and forget it about. Unfortunately, in our less-than-ideal world, maximizing the value of your HVAC infrastructure requires a more hands-on approach. Your ongoing HVAC maintenance plan should include:

Replacing Filters

At the very minimum, you should plan on replacing HVAC air filters at least once a season (every three months). Dirty filters not only lead to poor indoor air quality; they also constrict airflow, resulting in less efficient HVAC performance.

Following Manufacturer Maintenance Schedules

Just about every manufacturer provides a recommended maintenance schedule to ensure your equipment continues running at peak performance during its serviceable life. Some manufacturers even require proof that you’ve followed the recommended maintenance schedules to honor warranties following a failure.

Make sure to understand and follow these recommended maintenance schedules. Working with a residential HVAC service partner can simplify this process because they’ll keep track of maintenance schedules for you.

Making Proactive Repairs

If your HVAC provider suspects a component is on the verge of failing, it’s always advisable to go ahead and replace the part. Choosing to wait until a component completely breaks before replacing it can lead to more critical HVAC problems, damage other components, and shorten the lifespan of your system.

How the HVAC Experts at Garrison Can Help

If your family wants to get the most value from your HVAC budget, contact the experts at Garrison today. While we understand the temptation of waiting until it breaks to spend money on your HVAC system, we’re here to show you how adopting a proactive approach can save you time, money, and frustration in the long run.

 

Summer Energy Savings Tips for Your Residential HVAC System

/in /by

Have your energy costs risen with the South Florida summer temperatures? If they have, you should look into ways you can save energy. While blasting the air conditioning might seem like a good idea on a 95-degree day, you should consider your energy bills and your environmental impact first. Here are several tips for staying cool in the Florida heat while reducing your energy costs:

Use Preventive Maintenance

Having your heating and air conditioning system serviced regularly is called preventive maintenance. Waiting until your system suffers a major breakdown to have it serviced is called reactive maintenance. Engaging in preventative maintenance will keep your system working throughout the summer and in the long run. This type of maintenance involves checking on and fixing small problems before they become large ones. That includes:

  • Changing your air filters every month, or at least at the beginning of every season. This will improve the air quality in your home and prevent dust and allergens from causing health and breathing problems for you and your family.
  • Having the coils and fans professionally cleaned. This will improve your system’s energy efficiency.
  • Sealing the ducts in your home. This prevents air leaks that decrease your system’s efficiency.

While you can perform some of these tasks yourself, such as changing out the air filters, some require professional residential HVAC services, like the ones we offer. Hiring an HVAC services company to inspect and service your system regularly means your system will be serviced safely by a licensed technician. While you will have to spend money to hire these professional services, you will ultimately save money in the long run because you won’t have to hire professionals for many larger, more expensive repairs.

Keep the Air Moving

Instead of blasting your central air conditioner at its highest level, you can use it at a more moderate level and use ceiling fans to keep the air moving. To do this, you should keep doors open between rooms in your home. This will help the cool air travel freely between rooms, whereas closed doors would keep the air trapped in specific rooms.

Install a Programmable Thermostat

Using a programmable thermostat, such as Sensi, gives you greater control over your energy consumption. You can use a zoned cooling system, which is a room-by-room thermostat that comes with one multi-zone controller. With this system, you can set different rooms to different temperatures. So you can set an empty bedroom zone to a higher temperature, such as 80 degrees, while you can set the fully occupied living room zone to 73 degrees.

Use Window Treatments

While this tip doesn’t directly involve your HVAC system, it’s an additional way to keep your home cool. Having your windows treated with solar film will block out the brightest rays during summer and help keep your home cool before you even have to touch the thermostat. You can also put up curtains, drapes, blinds, or thermal-backed shades and keep them closed during the hottest periods of the day.

South Florida Residential HVAC Services

If you are interested in using preventive HVAC maintenance to help keep your house cool this summer, contact us today. We can fix small HVAC problems before they grow larger, but we also offer residential and commercial HVAC emergency services in case a major breakdown does occur.

South Florida HVAC

Preparing Your South Florida HVAC System for Summer

/7 Comments/in /by

As temperatures rise and humidity thickens the air, it’s time to start preparing your HVAC system for summer. What steps should you take to do that? In this post, we’ll outline some tips you can add to your preventative maintenance checklist.

Change Out Air Filters

This is one of the most cost-effective steps you can take to prepare your cooling system for summer. Changing your air filters monthly, or at least at the beginning of every season, will prevent dust and dirty air from building up in your HVAC system, which will save you money on service fees and energy bills in the long run. Taking this HVAC preventive maintenance step will improve the building’s air quality and your system’s energy efficiency. Cleaning out the air filters also can reduce allergens, so you won’t have to suffer through allergic reactions all spring and summer.

Install a Programmable Thermostat

A programmable thermostat, such as Sensi or NEST, can learn your building’s cooling patterns and adjust your HVAC system accordingly. This means the thermostat will customize the way it runs so your HVAC system doesn’t waste energy trying to cool your building in a way that doesn’t fit.

Insulate and Seal Air Ducts

Checking your air ducts can become part of your annual maintenance, and it definitely should become part of your summer preparation maintenance. If your air ducts are leaking, that could be costing you extra in your energy bills and your cooling and heating system service costs. Sealing and insulating your air ducts will help your HVAC system run more efficiently over longer periods of time.

Schedule an Air Conditioning Maintenance Appointment

While you can take your own steps to keep your system working well, some tasks are best left to the professionals. Scheduling a maintenance visit will give you a chance to find out if your HVAC system has critical problems that need fixing before temperatures really soar. The maintenance appointment should include specific HVAC maintenance measures, such as inspecting machine parts and checking refrigerant levels.
This is the summer preparation step where your system would most benefit from an HVAC preventive maintenance program. At Garrison Mechanical, we perform monthly HVAC service checks as part of our HVAC preventive maintenance contracts. Regular maintenance keeps your HVAC system from developing preventable problems, which is why having a preventative maintenance plan in place is always a good idea. With a preventative maintenance agreement in place, you can have peace of mind knowing your system will be ready for summer and won’t experience any breakdowns when you need cool air the most.

Prepare for Summer with Garrison Mechanical

If you’re ready to prepare your HVAC system for summer or you have questions about the preparation process, contact us today. Centrally located in Pembroke Pines, we perform commercial and residential preventive maintenance. We can work with you to customize an HVAC program that will fit your business’s or your home’s needs.

HVAC Maintenance | Air Comfort Corporation

5 Signs of Commercial HVAC Issues

/2 Comments/in /by

We’ve all become familiar with the sound of the thermostat clicking on, but what about those strange sounds and symptoms you may notice developing over time? When should you be concerned, and when is it time to call an HVAC contractor to address the problem? In this post, we’ll break down five of the most common commercial HVAC issues and how you can pinpoint them.

Rising Utility Bills

If you’ve noticed that your utility bills have been consistently rising even after adjusting for the time of year and climate, your HVAC infrastructure may be to blame. If your HVAC equipment requires more energy to run, there’s likely a deeper issue that’s causing it to run less efficiently. Fortunately, you probably won’t need to replace the whole system. Most often, a few energy efficiency upgrades can curb rising your utility bills, quickly delivering a full return on investment.

Your System Continuously Runs

If you’ve noticed that your HVAC system continues running throughout the day without pause, the load on your system is higher than it can handle. Your system is having to work around the clock to maintain a temperature that it either wasn’t built to handle or can no longer manage. A piece of critical equipment may be outdated or broken. Either way, if your system runs continuously to maintain the temperature you’ve set it at, it’s time to call a contractor to pinpoint the source of the problem.

Your System Trips the Breaker

If your heating and cooling systems consume so much power that it repeatedly trips the circuit breaker, you probably have a deeper electrical issue. An HVAC contractor can help you pinpoint the root of the problem while ensuring that electrical problems don’t lead to more critical system failures later on.

Noisier Operation

You’ve probably become so used to the sound of your HVAC system operating that it’s become background noise. If you notice any unusual noises like rattling, squeaking, grinding, or banging, your place of business is either haunted – in which case we can’t help you – or your HVAC system may require maintenance or repairs. Sounds like vents contracting and expanding in cold or warm weather, however, are no reason to be concerned unless they seem to be impacting the performance of your system.

Strange Smells

If you notice unusual smells emanating from air vents or your air handler unit, you’re likely dealing with an underlying issue like mold, moisture buildup, or a leak. Distinct smells like sulfur or rotten eggs may be signs of a gas issue. Either way, an experienced HVAC contractor can pinpoint the root of the problem and take corrective issue as quickly as possible. When it comes to your heating and air conditioning systems, unusual smells should never be ignored.
Proactively Address Potential Issues

If you want to proactively address potential issues before they turn into critical problems that require extensive repairs, contact the experts at Garrison Mechanical today. We’re here to help you with everything from the latest energy-saving upgrades and minimizing energy bills to pinpointing the root cause of that strange noise.

How to Handle your Commercial HVAC Emergency

/in , /by

We all like to think that emergencies only ever happen to others. Unfortunately, this mentality, as much as we wish it to be true, does nothing to prepare for the reality of a disaster. If you’ve ever needed emergency HVAC service at the height of summer or in the grips of winter, you understand the importance of preparation. As a business, commercial HVAC system downtime during extreme winter quickly leads to uncomfortable employees, disappointed customers, lost revenue, and missed opportunities.

That’s why it’s critical to develop a backup plan in the even to a critical HVAC failure. If it’s too late and you’re experiencing an emergency, here are some quick tips to get your system back up and running as quickly as possible. If, on the other hand, your organization wants to take a proactive approach to HVAC emergencies, here’s what you need to know.

Basic Troubleshooting

Before you call an HVAC contractor, there are some quick steps you can take to see if you can get your system back up and running on your own. If your HVAC infrastructure won’t turn on, first check your breakers to make sure power hasn’t been cut off. Simply restore power at first to see if that resolves the issue. If your system is repeatedly tripping the breaker, there’s likely a deeper underlying issue that needs correcting.

Other factors to check include thermostat issues, dirty air filters reducing airflow, or debris that’s congesting condensers. A quick check of these systems may solve the problem, saving you the expense of having to call an HVAC company. However, if none of these quick fixes get your HVAC running again, it’s time to get in touch with the professionals. While you may want to see if you can fix the equipment on your own, small issues quickly become major problems when you don’t understand the intricacies of your HVAC system.

Prioritize Preventive Maintenance

The most straightforward way to handle an emergency is to take steps to avoid one altogether. By taking a proactive approach to your HVAC system, you can avert disaster altogether. A proactive approach includes seasonal maintenance appointments, corrective repairs, and efficiency upgrades that keep your heating and cooling equipment operating at peak performance while maximizing the longevity of your HVAC investment.

At the same time, when you partner with an HVAC contractor to develop a proactive maintenance plan, your partner takes a personal approach to understanding the intricacies of your system while prioritizing your organization’s needs. That means in the event of an emergency your HVAC contractor will have you at the top of their list for handling emergency repairs.

During peak seasons, when other businesses are scrambling to find emergency service, you’ll know exactly who to call. At the same time, because they already understand how your HVAC equipment works, they’ll be able to more efficiently assess your system and pinpoint the root cause of the problem. That means your heating or cooling system will be back up and running sooner than you thought possible following an emergency.

Start a Partnership

If you’re interested in taking a more proactive approach to HVAC emergencies, contact the experts at Garrison Mechanical. We’ll take the time to understand your HVAC infrastructure, maximize energy efficiency, and make sure your organization stays covered in the event of an emergency. Plus, you’ll always know exactly who to call for all of your installation and service needs.

Spring Maintenance for Your South Florida Commercial HVAC

/in /by

Spring is in the air, and now’s the time to ensure that your air conditioning system is ready to handle the peak heat of summer. Not sure where to start? In this post, we’ll share three simple steps you can take today to ensure your HVAC systems are running at peak performance, saving your business time and money in the long run.

Replace Air Filters

How long has it been since you replaced your air filters? Depending on the load demand of your system, we recommend replacing air filters on a monthly basis. This approach is one of the simplest, most cost-effective ways to prevent inefficient or damaged equipment. At the very least, you should be changing your system filters at the beginning of each season. Dirty filters restrict airflow circulation and don’t filter air as effectively, quickly leading to system issues and a decreased lifespan. Plus, your team can replace air filters in a matter of minutes, instantly improving air quality and system performance for a minimal investment.

Perform an Energy Audit

Between the peak seasons of winter and summer when your HVAC infrastructure demands the most energy, spring offers an ideal time to perform an energy audit. Take the time to total up how much your current HVAC systems are costing you.

Chances are, you’re paying more than you’d like. If so, consider the possibility of upgrading your equipment and total up how much capital you’d be willing to invest in any upgrades. An energy efficiency upgrade can start saving you money right away while making the most of your existing equipment. From there, you can consult an HVAC contractor to see how much an upgrade could save you, potentially offsetting the cost of your upgrades in energy savings. By completing upgrades in the spring, you can be confident that your air conditioners are prepared to perform at peak efficiency, even during the intense summer heat.

Schedule an AC Maintenance Appointment

While there’s a lot you can do to maximize the value of your HVAC systems, there are some tasks that are better left to the professionals. Tuning your equipment up after the winter is one of those things. A springtime preventative maintenance program can reduce the risk of critical a system failure that results in downtime and revenue loss. By proactively upgrading equipment, checking refrigerant levels, inspecting parts, and calibrating your thermostat, an AC maintenance appointment can quickly get you prepared for the summer. After all, making the time for an hour-long maintenance appointment in the spring is a lot easier than having to deal with a day-long system repair at the height of summer.

Contact the South Florida HVAC Experts

Whether you’re ready to schedule that springtime HVAC maintenance appointment, or you need emergency service, contact the highly-trained heating and air conditioning experts at Garrison Mechanical today. Centrally located in Pembroke Pines, we’re here for all of your HVAC installation, service, and maintenance needs.

What You Need to Know About the R22 Phase Out

/in /by

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of phasing out ozone-depleting substances (ODS) like R-22 refrigerant in the United States by 2020. HCFC-22, also known as R-22, is one of the more popular refrigerants on the market today. Even if your organization’s air conditioning system relies on R-22, you have a variety of options moving forward. Here’s what you can and can’t do when it comes to the R-22 refrigerant phase-out.

What You Can Do

If your existing infrastructure uses and already contains any R-22 refrigerant, you can continue using it without legal penalty. However, if your organization plans to keep running equipment with R-22, the EPA recommends planning out a way to repair or replace any leaking equipment so that you can recover and reuse any refrigerant. Since R-22 won’t be readily available for purchase, you will plan on storing recovered R-22 to service any of your own equipment. However, once you run out of R-22, do not count on being able to obtain more. Once 2020 arrives, you’ll need to start looking for a more sustainable R-22 replacement solution.

What You Can’t Do

If your organization is planning to expand your AC system now or in the near future, new R-22 cannot be used to increase cooling capacity. Upgraded and expanded systems are still considered new systems, so you have to use either reclaimed R-22 or an alternative refrigerant. If you’re planning on making extensive HVAC equipment upgrades, you should plan on finding a system replacement that does not depend on an R-22 supply.

What You Should Do

If you’d like to continue using R-22 for the time being, feel free to do so. Just be aware that the importation and production of R-22 will become illegal on January 1, 2020. You should be prepared for the price of after-market, new, and reclaimed to rise sharply as individuals and businesses are purchasing R-22 to sell after the phaseout.

If your business wants to expand or upgrade your HVAC infrastructure, plan out a budget ahead of time for the long-term expenses of your HVAC system after R-22 has been phased out. You’ll likely discover that a more sustainable infrastructure update will end up saving you in the long run, so you can spend more on the upgrade itself. That’s why we recommend your organization starts pursuing environmentally-friendly initiatives that don’t rely on R-22 today. That way, you can break away from R-22 dependence and be better prepared for the challenges of tomorrow.

Replacement Options

With a wide range of R-22 refrigerant alternatives already on the market, switching over to R-22 replacements couldn’t be easier. Many options are even more efficient than R-22, so you can save money on electricity and utility bills. On top of improving energy efficiency, these options do not deplete the earth’s ozone layer as R-22 does. As each day passes, there are fewer and fewer reasons to continue relying on R-22.

Alternative options include:

  • 404A, AZ-50 (507)
  • AZ-20 (410A)
  • 407C
  • 422D

How We Can Help

If your organization is planning an upgrade or new installation now or in the near future, contact the experts at Garrison Mechanical today. We’ll help you explore your options and find an ideal solution to prepare you for the future.