#AskDerekCole Episode 55: Fireplace Heating

Hey, on this episode I talk about fireplaces, duct cleaning, the air handler, and what would I do if I could do anything. You ask your comfort and energy questions and they get answered. This is the Ask Derrick Cole Show. Hey, this is Derrick Cole. Welcome to episode 55 of the Ask Derrick Cole Show, answering your home and energy questions and Every now and then, personal questions. I hope you guys, uh, watched the video that dropped Monday. Got some pretty good reviews on that, um, and we should be doing more of those. So when I get on a rant or my soapbox, I'll make that into a little video and then we'll, we'll go that way. Uh, but, uh, check it out. There's probably a way on here to link it up somewhere, so it's going to be in this area here. Other than that, anything else? Fantastic. Let's get into the— oh, it's raining. Yeah, as long as it don't rain Friday night, right? Or Saturday, because we got Halloween.

All the people here in Meerkat Land are waiting for Derek Coates.

Let's get into it.

Can a fireplace be an efficient way to heat my home?

Can it be? Uh, no. I'll tell you why.

Um, because it's a fireplace.

I mean, it's a good way to provide another heat source, but I wouldn't recommend it for heating your whole house because you're losing Of course, with the fireplace, you're losing some heat to combustion. The actual fireplace itself, the chimney, all that heat is escaping, and you want to be as efficient as possible. So I wouldn't recommend it as a primary heat source. Now, they're nice and pretty this time of year, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and look good. I would use it as kind of a supplementary deal.

So I would use it that way.

I wouldn't use it as a primary unless you got one of those wood stoves. I mean, them things are like 600 degrees hot and they'll keep you and your neighbor warm.

How often should my ducts be cleaned?

Yes, you should clean your ducts. What we do is actually clean and seal. So as soon as you clean them, we seal them with a duct sealing material we use, and they shouldn't, outside of a clean every now and then. You shouldn't really have any crawl space or attic stuff coming in any longer after they're sealed, but we all have kids and we know that things go down or up the registers, so they might need to be cleaned for that reason. I mean, if you were 10-year-old Derek, sweeping is a chore. And you saw a hole in the floor. I'm just saying the dirt might go down there. Not saying it did or didn't. I'm just saying it's possible. I can see how that could happen.

Could or has?

What does the air handler do for my system?

If you have a split system, the air handler actually gets the air to the duct system, which then takes it to the house. So if you have a split unit, which means you have a unit outside and a unit inside the house, under the house, in the attic, depending on what you got, or garage, then the copper refrigerant lines go from the outdoor unit to the indoor unit, and the indoor unit has the blower motor, the blower wheel, as well as the coil to heat or cool the air, and then it blows it out to the duct system, which would then put it into the home. So it handles air. That's pretty much what it does. One problem we have seen before is with this blower motor, blower wheel in the air handler, is that when your system is not clean or the filter hasn't been changed and gets dirty, The actual blower wheel has like little, I would say, cups everywhere to actually force the air and cup it and grab it and move it into the system. So the more dirt that gets on it, of course, the more that kind of flattens out. So then it gets harder to move the air inside the unit.

So what you'll have is when we go out to the house or a professional comes out to the house, they'll go out and say, hey, your blower wheel needs cleaning. What they're saying is you got so much buildup on that fin, it's not pushing the air out as efficient as it could. So we pull that out, put some cleaner on it, clean it, dry it, put it back in, and it's good as new. So that is one thing to kind of be concerned about, is because you want to make sure it's working as efficiently as possible. So you want those fins on that blower wheel or squirrel cage as some people call it because if you think of a hamster in a cage and it goes around.

Same kind of deal.

So you want to make sure that's clean. You want to make sure the air is actually being pushed into the house versus when it gets dirty, it gets flat and it has a hard time getting that air where it needs to go.

If you could learn any one random skill, what would it be?

We kind of talked about me being a superhero a few weeks ago and how I wanted to fly. Well, that would take into being a pilot. I would like to have my own plane and be able to fly my own plane and get up in the sky. So one skill I would take, or if I could, would be a pilot so I could fly my own airplane. So I could be Superman, but, you know, practically.

Within the reality.

Within the reality of gravity and planet Earth, I can be Superman. So, yeah, that would be it. What do you think?

I think it was good.

What would you do?

I don't know, I kind of like the pilot idea. I do. I think I'd like to fly too.

Yeah, because there's something— it's just me personally, but I do like, I do like being by myself. So to me, an airplane or flying by yourself would kind of take that to another level. I mean, no one can text me or call me or bother me way up there. It's just me in the sky in the machine. So I think it's pretty cool. Alright, that's a good answer. Alright, episode 55 in the books. Hey, hashtag all your questions, ask Derrick Cole, home energy, personal or career aspirations. Let me know if I can help you out and we'll get it on the show. Why, why, why?