Derek Cole recommends servicing your HVAC twice a year, once for heating and once for cooling. A 1/20 inch of dirt can cut efficiency by over 20%. Common problems like dirty filters, weak capacitors, and clogged coils are cheap to fix early but expensive if they break down.
Questions this episode answers
Twice a year (biannual), to check heating and cooling.
The episode cites the EPA: 1/20 of an inch of dirt can drop efficiency by over 20%.
States a 14 SEER minimum is required today and mentions common units at 15–16 SEER.
Chapters
Foreign. Hey, this is Derek Cole and welcome to the Derek Cole Podcast. This podcast is all about home comfort and energy savings. The majority is really comprised of short audio clips of a device and answers to questions that we've been asked over the years. We also kind of sprinkle in the Ask Derek Cole show audio, which is a much longer Q and A kind of program. If you like this episode, and I hope you do, I would love for you to share it on social with others. Just take a screenshot of the program and hashtag it Derek Cole so I can see you. But let's get in to today's episode.
Do I need to do a maintenance twice a year and do I really need to service a new unit?
Maintenance twice a year is very important as far as servicing a new unit. And we get this question a lot and there's some misinformation and we've gotten the comment quite a few times of hey, the unit's brand new. Why do I need to service it six months in, one year in? Why do I need to keep doing that? Well, the units today are so efficient. I mean, you're at a 14 seer minimum. You have to install today or they can make today and you got 15, 16 going on. So what that translates to is the aluminum or the copper, depending on the brand, is so thin, According to the EPA, 1/20 of an inch of dirt can drop your efficiency by over 20%. So if you just bought a 14 seer unit six months ago and you don't have it cleaned out, you know, at six months or at a year, you don't have it done, or you don't have a 14 seer unit anymore. That's not me saying it, that's the EPA saying it. So if you take an inch, slice it up 20 times, and that is how little bit of dirt can affect your efficiency. So it's very important to keep it maintained, keep it clean, and to keep it checked. You do it twice a year because you want to do it for the check the heating and check the cooling. Now, as long as you get it done every six months, it doesn't matter when in that aspect happens. But it does need to happen because in this part of the country, a lot of things that go wrong, a lot of things that happen in the summertime or things that could have been prevented with maintenance, change the filters, dirty coils, dirty blower wheels, which is causing the blower motor to go out or causing the capacitor to overheat and then it goes out all these Things can be checked on maintenance, and you can save you a lot of time and it's going to save you time and money on top of that. Because your unit's not breaking down when it's 95 degrees outside or when it's 20 degrees outside, your unit's not breaking down. Now, the maintenance is a preventive measure. It's not saying it's never going to happen, but at least you're catching slight change to oil in your car. At least you're checking things as you go versus not changing it all, not getting a checkup. Then five years later, you have a breakdown and you're on the side of the road. So same kind of situation. So, yes, very important. That was a long answer to this question. But it's very important to keep it maintained. Your unit runs a lot more than your vehicle does. Your unit takes up over half of the energy in your home. So keeping it maintained and efficient. Checked is very critical to make sure you're not wasting money and you're not having an unexpected breakdown when it happens again. A lot of things we saw this summary. Capacitors. I mean, we change out a lot of weak capacitors. Capacitors, kind of like if you're spinning the ball in your finger, you've all done that before. You have the sand here making the ball rotate. Okay, well, that's kind of like a capacitor is still making the motor go. So once that goes out, the ball falls down. So once your capacitor goes out, your unit's not working. So all these things can be checked, can be read ahead of time to make sure you're good to go. All right, that was a long answer. How long was this?
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