Derek Cole walks through four HVAC maintenance steps for summer. Change your air filter every 30 days, check your thermostat settings, stop adding refrigerant if you have a leak (fix the leak instead), and keep your condensate drain clear so water can exit.
Questions this episode answers
Every 30 days.
About 1/20 of an inch of dirt can affect efficiency by 5–15%.
From sims1hour.com (enter email to receive the PDF).
Southeastern North Carolina.
Chapters
Hey, what's up, guys? This is Derek Cole. And welcome to the audiobook of my book, Four Tips to Beat the Heat this Summer. Let's get right into it. Tip number one, air filter. Something very, very important. According to Energy Star, it's one of the things you can do to affect your energy usage. Air filter, every 30 days, check and change your filter. Now, Derek, my filter, I check every 30 days. It's never dirty. I never have to change it. Okay, if you never have to change your air filter, that is a problem as well because it should be getting airflow, therefore it should be getting dirty and it should need to be replaced. If you're not having a dirty air filter, you have a problem. There is a duct problem somewhere because the air that air conditioner needs is getting back to it. It's getting to it somewhere. It's not coming through the filter though. It's not. So now you have, depending on where your unit is, crawl space air, attic air, some kind of air is getting to it unfiltered, which is also a problem because according to the Same Energy Star, 1 20th, 1 20th. Think about 1 20th of an inch. 1 20th of an inch. Basically you take an inch, slice it up 20 times, that's 1/20. 1/20 of an inch of dirt can affect your efficiency 5 to 15%. It's crazy. So change, check your air filter it again. If, if you're not, if you're not changing your filter because it's not dirty and your unit is running, that is a problem as well. So, so you have to do it either way. Either you change your air filter because it's dirty, or you need to have your system checked because your filter is not getting dirty. Either way, those need to be lugged at tip number two. Number two is very simple. Check your thermostat. Thermostat problem is. Number two, a lot of calls we get when we first switch over to heating or we first switch over cooling. The calls we get are, I don't have heat, I don't have cooling. And we come out, do a diagnostic safety check. Guess what? Thermostat is on the wrong mode. We're in cooling season, you have to sit on heating. We're in heating season, you have to sit on cooling. Check your thermostat. Make sure set properly, set correctly. And if you have the auto feature, even better, if you have the auto feature, put your thermostat in auto heating at this temperature. Cooling at this temperature, you have your range. That way, if it drops below or gets Above. If it gets above, it turns on the cooling. If it drops below, turn on the heating. So either way, you're good to go. So if you have the auto feature, use it. But tip number two is check your thermostat. Tip number three, refrigerant. Now we have some customers give us a call and say, hey, I need refrigerant every year. My system is always in pound or too low on refrigerant and needs every season. You know what, we could just throw a band aid on it and charge you for refrigerant. But that's not who we are, and that's not what you need to be doing. If your system needs refrigerant, it's because it's lost refrigerant somewhere. That needs to be addressed, that needs to be checked, and it needs to be fixed. If that is the problem, your system is closed. It's like you. It's like your body. It's like me going to the hospital every spring and saying, hey, doc, I need blood. I'm running low on blood. Now what? What is the doctor gonna say? Well, let's hook you right up there, Derek, and give you some a positive blood and you're good to go. No, they're gonna say, what? Why do you need blood? What's going on? Same thing with your system. Your system is like. Your body is also a closed system. You should not be leaking refrigerant. If you are and need refrigerant, then we need to see where the leak is, fix the leak, and get you going in the right direction. Because just like you, just like your body, if you're running low on blood, your body's not going to operate. If your system is running low in refrigerant, it's not going to operate at peak efficiency again, you do not need refrigerant every single year. If that is the case, you have a leak, you have a problem, we need to fix it and see what's going on with the leak. Tip number four. And finally, number four, proper drainage. Heating in there is all about heat transfer. So when we get into the cooling season in southeastern North Carolina, we do a lot of water removal. Because your air conditioner is a dehumidifier. We have a lot of humidity in this area, so most of our air conditioning is really dehumidifying and getting the water out of the air. And to do that, you need to have that water go somewhere. So a lot of the problems we see too are, my ceiling's wet, my floor is wet. We Have a problem getting water from the inside to the outside where we want it because we don't want to mess up our stuff, right? Water removal, drainage lines, you need to make sure all that is operational and clean before you start taking all this water out of the air. And that water has nowhere to go. It's going to go somewhere again, it's like air, it's going to go to the, you know, least resistant spot. So if it's the ceiling, you, if it's the overflow of the pan in the ceiling, if it's under a house, if it's, you know, you got your system inside your house and on the floor, then so be it. And these are be running downhill, right? So if that water has nowhere to go, it's going to cause a mess, it's going to cause a problem. So water removal is tip number four. Make sure to drain. These lines are clean, are good. It's all part of a, it's all part of tune up. It's all part of a maintenance. I'm sorry, we check it as far as part of the tune up. It's not included in the tune up like it is on the maintenance, on the maintenance for those club members we go to cleaning that drain line is standard. That's a standard practice because you just went all winter, all fall, most of the spring without using your air conditioner. Now on your heating system, unless you have a condensing 90% furnace, which is probably not happening, your drain line has not been used since last summer, last fall, last time you used your air conditioner. So when it starts getting in that season where you're doing a lot of heavy cooling and you're removing a lot of water, that's going to build up and it's going to overflow unless you're draining properly. So tip number four, check your drain lines. Water removal, that's another problem. Again, you don't have to write these down. They have four tips PDF absolutely free. Go to Simmons one hour comm, put in your email address, you email from me with the 4 tips link. You can click on it, download it, save it, print it, whatever you want to do with it. And then every week or so I will be reaching out to you with kind of tips on energy savings, tips on heating there and anything I think would be of value to you. I'm not going to, you know, we're not going to spam you, I'm not going to send you a spam email every day of the week saying by this, by that, that's not happening. That's, that's not how we operate. So go to our website, sims1hour.com Sign up right there. Get the four tips right your inbox. You can, again, save it, print it, save it on your computer, whatever you want to do with it. But four tips to beat the heat this summer. Very valuable information. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for being a customer. We appreciate you, your family, and the honor of serving you and your family and coming to your home. That's something that we do not take lightly, something we take very serious. And we are proud and honored to serve you. Thanks.
