Podcast excerpt (single-speaker) explaining the importance of professional HVAC servicing and cleaning to prevent breakdowns. The speaker describes heat transfer in heating/cooling, how coils (aluminum or copper) remove heat, and how dirt on coils, filters, and blower wheels reduces efficiency and stresses components (motors, capacitors). The EPA is cited about small amounts of dirt causing up to ~20% efficiency loss.
Chapters
One secret I want to share is having your system serviced. Having your system serviced, that's probably not a huge secret you guys that have been following for a while because we talk about it a lot and how important it is. But a secret is having your system service, have a professional inspect service and clean your H vac system. So why is that important? Heating in there is all about heat transfer. So if you think about going back to early, sorry, I'm on my front port. So if you hear noise, it's cars on the road. But if you go back to your early days of being in science class, you know there is no cold air or cool air. It's only degrees of heat. Right, Sorry, got some notifications, should turn those off. There's only degrees of heat. So hitting there is. You know, in the wintertime we're bringing heat to the house. In the summertime we're removing heat from the house. So today is like, you know, it was 90, so you want to be cool in the house. So how we do that is by removing the heat from the house. Just like your refrigerator, when you put in room temperature drinks or food, it cools it down because it removes heat from that motorcycle. Sorry, got a busy street afternoon. But it removes heat heat. So your heat pump or gas pack or what you have does the same thing in the AC mode. It removes heat from the home and provides a cool home for you and your family. So to do that it uses coils. The longer the that air sits over that cooling coil, the cooler the air gets, the more heat it can remove from the air. It's the kind of the same principle as when you're driving in your car. You know, like today where it's 90 something degrees, it's obviously very warm in the car. You got the AC blasting, it's on high. And then you're, you know, you're going like 45 miles down the road and you turn, turn the fan down a little bit because it's getting a little cooler. And as you turn it down, energy feels like it's getting cooler. So you turn the temperature up in the car. Same way with your AC unit at home. The slower the air moves across that coil, the more it can remove heat, the more it can dehumidify and the colder the air feels because it's able to sit on that coal longer than if you have the fan on high. But getting your system serviced is important because those coils, depending on the age or the make of it, is either made from aluminum or it's made from copper. So those coils transfer heat. So whenever they have a buildup of dirt or debris or, or something on the coals, the harder it is for it to remove the heat or transfer the heat. The harder it is to transfer the heat, the harder the components have to work. For example, the motors, the capacitors. Dirt is the number one killer of ac and furnaces. Excuse me. So our main job is to remove the dirt. Right? Because that is the biggest killer. So if you just bought six months ago, say a 14 sear unit, well, it's so thin, the copper and aluminum, those are so thin. The EPA says, not me. The EPA says 1/20 of an inch of dirt on that evaporator, that coal can lead to a 20%. Up to a 20% efficiency loss. 1 20th of an inch. When you think about it, how big an inch is, and you slice it up 20 times. That's how a little bit of dirt can affect the efficiency of your unit. So the, the more dirt, the harder has to work, the more things will go out because they're having to work overtime to overcome what's on that coil. So that's why you have those challenges with motors and capacitors. Now, they can go out for any number of reasons. But you can help prevent a dirt problem by having your system service. Dirty coils, dirty filters, dirty blower wheels, all that can cause them to overheat and they'll go out sooner than they would have otherwise.
