Smart Thermostat Facts

The air conditioning was absolutely perfect and made the entire experience completely blissful.

I’m planning to go on another vacation. I’m way overdue for going on vacation in general, did you know that I haven’t been on vacation in 4 years? It’s been terrible. I work an office job and I’m so sick of being in the office that I’m just dying to get outside and do something useful. I want to live a little. I’ve always had the mindset that I work to live and do not live to work. Anyways, finally a good time came and I was able to take a week off and go somewhere. I already knew that I wanted to go somewhere tropical. Somewhere exotic. Someplace that was brand new that I had never been to before. I wanted to experience new sites, new people, different cultures and new smells, and all those things I could experience at an exotic getaway. I have made my choice and I decided that I was going to visit a tropical island. I was looking at all of the things that were on this island and there were so many different activities for the people there. I think I was going to go snorkeling in the ocean, that’s what I really wanted to do. When I was planning my trip to visit this tropical island I was planning it with heating and air conditioning in mind. It’s very important for me to have good indoor temperatures if I’m going to have a tropical vacation. One time when I took a vacation and I ended up in a hotel with terrible AC it nearly ruined the entire trip. Thankfully this time the hotel that I got at the island was one of the most peaceful places I had ever been to in my entire life. The air conditioning was absolutely perfect and made the entire experience completely blissful. Even the wildlife outside was absolutely beautiful. There were brilliantly colored birds, gorgeous fish in the sea, and even some really cool colored green and gold geckos. I wish I could stay at this place forever. It was like heaven on Earth.

ductwork cleaning

Normally I’m the kind of person that would love going on hikes.

In fact I’ve always considered myself to be a very active individual, however if there is one mistake I made it was choosing the wrong day to take a hike.

For the past week or so I had been watching the temperatures outside closely, we were right in the middle of the summer months and all of those temperatures outside had just been too hot to even think about taking a hike. When I go hiking, I don’t like to just take a hike and walk a small area, I like to walk at least a mile or so. I love traveling by foot. There’s something very comforting about being out in nature and just enjoying the scenery. After a week had passed the temperature still hadn’t gotten much better and so I decided to take a risk and I looked at the temperatures outside and they showed that it was 90 degrees out, now this is when my rational mind should have kicked in and told me that it was a terrible idea to go outside and take a hike anyways but my desire to go outside and get into nature overruled my logical mind and I thought to myself well how bad could it be? Well let me just say this, after over an hour of being stuck in the sun without hardly any shade at all, my skin was as red as a lobster! It was stinging and burning from the horrible sunburn then I had obtained from going outside. One of the main things that helped cool my stinging skin, was surprisingly my air conditioning system. I went straight over to my thermostat and put my AC unit on blast to cool the burn. I would lie under my AC directly underneath the air vent for hours to help the pain go away. That and some sunburn medicine really helped me heal and I’ve learned my lesson. I’m never going outside in the summer heat like that again.
air conditioning provider

I hear people talk about a guy named Mike.

What stinks about moving to a small town is that I don’t know who any of the handymen are. I went from an area where I knew the local HVAC guy, electrician and plumber. Now when I do projects, I do them myself. I have asked around, taken flyers in businesses and done some googling. I just can’t seem to find those local men though. A handyman would be great for all the renovations I do. I want someone to do drywall work and who would gut rooms for me. I am okay with electrical and plumbing work. In a pinch my husband can do that. I really want a good HVAC dealer though. Right now I am using a HVAC guy in the next town over. He isn’t really that great. He frequently overcharged me since he has to drive to my home quite a distance. He also is constantly trying to upsell me. My HVAC unit is fine and works great. It isn’t that old either. Despite this, the city HVAC guy constantly is trying to sell me a new one. I know there is a local HVAC dealer. I hear people talk about a guy named Mike. Mike doesn’t have a cell phone apparently or a business listing. You need to go to his house to ask for service. Since I am new in town I don’t really feel like I can just barge into this guy’s home and ask for HVAC service. What a weird way to run a business too right? Maybe I can run into him somewhere naturally.

gas furnace

I am kind of excited for the day when my HVAC dies.

Currently I have a central HVAC system.

I think it is technically a heat pump. I have the indoor air handler on a stand in my hallway closet. The closet should be a huge storage area for me. I would love to put cleaning supplies, wrapping paper, coats and shoes in there. Sadly, there is no room. Between the HVAC and the water heater there is hardly any space left. I can wedge a mop, broom, bucket and dust pan. That is it. I am excited for the day when the HVAC quits. I am going to change to a ductless option next. That way the indoor air handlers would be mounted on the walls of every room. I could have zone control and save some money. I wouldn’t need to provide AC when I am cooking in every room of the house. I wouldn’t need to heat the guest room that nobody occupies. The best is that half of my closet would be free to put stuff in. Then when the hot water heater goes, I will choose a tankless model. That way it will be wall mounted and the size of a small suitcase. I then could use the entire space. Right now I have stuff crammed into my kitchen and bathroom. Having that extra closet space will be a game changer. This is a long way coming though. The water heater is only 7 years old. My HVAC unit is 18 years old though. So it might die any day now.

 

heating equipment

I did some renovations when I moved into my home.

• I didn’t want to do anything major like rip up the floors or remodel the bathroom.

It was just decorative stuff. I scraped the popcorn off all the signs and sanded them smooth. I painted all the bedrooms and added new switch plates, outlets and lights. Lastly I did new rugs in each of the rooms. Those simple touches really changed the look. The hallway I am most proud of honestly. It went from being dark and dingy to quite modern. The half wood walls were sanded and painted white. The top portion is a light gray. The ceiling is totally smooth with a modern smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector mounted. I even sprung to get recessed lighting put in there. The last touch was the hallway thermostat. It was a manual thermostat that was beige with a plastic toggle. My husband constantly bumped the toggle and would turn on the heater. It only had a ten degree range. So it would change from 70 to 80 with a small bump. My husband could never read the numbers so he didn’t know what he did. It looked hideous and wasn’t functional. I replaced the thermostat just for style reasons. Now I am glad that I chose a smart thermostat. It has a silver surround and gray interface to match my hallway. It lights up when I walk by and tells me the outdoor temperature. It also can be controlled from my phone. It is way more practical than what I had.

heated floors

When I moved into my home I wasn’t pleased that there was a woodstove in there.

The wood stove took up so much space in the living room.

After living in the home of rawhide I realized it was merely a decorative piece. The woodstove wasn’t large enough to heat the home. Inside it was totally clean too. The previous homeowner spent a ton of money putting in on a brick pad, venting it through the ceiling and adding a stack to the roof. The heater was functional but worthless. Why would they do that? Well I had a huge mess when I had it removed. I wanted to put a TV in the middle of the home, not a woodstove. I also hated that the brick took up space in the home. I first smashed the brick with a sledgehammer and cleaned up the debris. I then patched the hole where it was cut in the carpet. I had to get the woodstove patched and the vent removed. Then I called for roofers to remove the stack and patch the area where it was removed. Finally I then had to sell the woodstove. My local HVAC dealer didn’t even want it because it was so small. I was able to sell it to a guy that wanted it for his hunting cabin. Now my home looks so much bigger without the woodstove. I actually have a nice, big living room that I can arrange the way I like. My central heater works just fine by itself too. Getting rid of the heater wasn’t a problem.

a/c set up

With furnaces you have a few choices. You can select a gas, oil or electric version. Which one is best for your home? The gas powered one is the most typical option. Just about every HVAC dealer should know how to install it. The service is quite typical as well. It does a good job in cold weather. The issue with this type is that the installation is pretty involved. You need gas hookups and a flue system installed. The maintenance is constantly ongoing. If the gas furnace overheats, you can have a potential fire hazard on your hands. It is easy for the system to overheat with the dust inside of the system. It can also get a cracked heat exchanger and release carbon monoxide. An oil based one is much safer. It also burns a hotter flame and is more efficient in that regard. However, with an oil furnace you are reliant on oil deliveries rather than just picking up gas. It isn’t as secure of a purchase. You could be left without oil on a very cold day if a delivery gets back up. Another negative is that an on site oil tank is needed for this type of furnace. Homeowners complain that the tank is large and quite attentive. While an electric furnace seems to be the best option since you get 100% of the power you pay for. Also it is easy to install and maintain. However, an electric furnace is extremely expensive to run. If you live where it is cold most of the year, don’t get this heater. It will most certainly bankrupt you.

heating dealership

That’s why the condensate line removes the water plus puts it outdoors

I have always hated plus feared water leaks plus water harm more broadly speaking, and i lived in a household for a while that had water harm done to the floors but the previous occupants tried to hide it, but there was a lot of mold in that household just from all of the harmd wood in the subfloors. I ended up moving out of the household because I just couldn’t handle the effect it had on my pollen irritations. I have always looked for homes that lacked any kind of poor water harm in the years since. I have also been entirely fearful of inadvertently causing any water harm as well. That’s why I’m entirely adamant about having a secondary boiler in the winter time season. In case my primary heater goes out, I don’t want to lose the ability to have indoor heat otherwise my pipes could freeze plus then burst. It would lead to catastrophic water harm in my house, but I had no idea that the a/c could leak water too. I knew that a/cs dripped water outside but I never affixed that to the water inside the machine in the first place, however as air goes through the a/c, moisture is pulled from it plus it has to go anywhere. That’s why the condensate line removes the water plus puts it outdoors. But if the condensate line gets blocked from algae buildup, the water can back up into your a/c plus flood the areas around the air handler itself, but sporadically this leads to awful water harm, especially with wood.

Duct cleaning

There’s a lot of advantages to living on a piece of home with lots of land.

• I feel actually lucky that this piece of home particularly has woods on it.

I can particularly go hiking on my own home in the hours before sunset. I do not have to get in the automobile in addition to drive down to a local nature preserve. Plus the nature preserve constantly gets closed down right at sunset, however you can’t stay in addition to watch the sun go down otherwise you could get locked in in addition to not get out until the day. There’s a giant gate in addition to somebody comes in addition to locks it every night right at sundown. So I actually appreciate having all of these woods on my home in addition to being able to go for walks whenever I want to. On top of the hiking openings they afford me, I also have plenty of trees for firewood. This year I decided to buy a wood stove to help offset winter season heating costs. Otherwise I correctly just use an electric furnace however it’s seriously pricey using it throughout the whole winter season season. I knew utilizing wood heating would decrease the frequency in which I need to use the central heater, then however, I did not anticipate how difficult cutting wood would turn out to be. I need to get one of those electric wood splitters so I do not have to swing an ax anymore. Worried that I am going to hurt myself with this ax one of these nights. At least I have enough wood split for the winter season season in addition to all the heating that it’s going to require to stay warm indoors.

ductwork

There are a lot of odd air filters out there on the market.

I never entirely knew just how several air filters there are until I had to go out shopping for one myself; Not only are there all kinds of odd brands plus sizes, however there are also all kinds of odd applications.

There are air filters that are nice for commercial applications, retail applications, plus residential applications. There are also air filters that are nice for reducing pollen plus other allergens. Those are the types of air filters that I need because I suffer greatly from seasonal pollen irritations every single year, whenever I went to the home improvement store I had no idea that I was going to have to look through so several odd kinds of air filters. I entirely thought at that point that I was going to have to ask someone for help because I had no idea what kind of air filter I needed to get for my house, however of course, when you’re in one of those sizable home improvement stores, it’s almost impossible to find anyone who can help you; Even if you find an employee to help you, most of the time they don’t know what they’re doing or they say that they labor in another department or something like that. It’s consistently irritating to me whenever that kind of thing happens. I finally found the right air filter for my Heating, Ventilation, plus A/C system, however it took me about 30 minutes. I ended up asking another customer for advice, but he seemed to know what he was doing!

 

duct cleaning