Summers in Austin, TX are as hot as they come, and if you own a centralized air conditioning system, it’s likely working overtime to keep your house cool. That usually comes with a heavy spike in your monthly bills, and most of us are used to paying more every summer for the privilege. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you have a centralized air conditioner and a large house, you might consider installing a zone control system in your ducts. It doesn’t involve changing or replacing any part of your existing system: merely upgrading it with new components that will increase its precision and versatility. Here’s how.
The ducts branch out from your air conditioning system to all the corners of your house, carrying conditioned air from the centralized unit. A zone control system simply lets you control the flow of that air more precisely. It entails a series of valves and shutters places at key points, allowing you to adjust the temperature in each room or section individually. Each valve has its own thermostat and control panel, and each one can be operated separately from the others.
The obvious benefits of a zone control system include the ability to set different temperatures in different rooms, so one family member can set the temperature in their room at 75° and another at 72°. But that’s a luxury and while it’s quite nice, it’s not the main benefit of the system. The main benefit comes from extending that principle: turning off the air in parts of the home you aren’t using and running it only in parts of the home that you are. That can save you a great deal on lower AC bills, as well as lowering the strain on the system and reducing the risk of repair.
Intelligent Air Services can install zone control systems in your home. Call us today!
An air conditioning emergency is defined as any situation when your air conditioner either shuts down unexpectedly or experiences such a serve operational problem that you can’t continue to run it safely. The issue isn’t so much with the air conditioner itself—which you can and should shut off the moment you experience any issues. No, the problem is how to keep your house cool in the middle of our scorching Round Rock, TX summers. A lack of air conditioning could be a serious threat to your health, especially if you have elderly family members in the house or those sensitive to the heat. Once you’ve checked for a simple solution to the problem (such as a triggered circuit breaker or a thermostat that’s been accidentally turned off) and have called for an air conditioning repair service, here are some simple steps to help keep cool.
- Get everyone inside and refrain from opening any outside doors or windows unless you absolutely have to. Every time you do, you heat the home up a little more.
- Stay on the ground floor of your home, or even the basement if yours is clean. Warm air rises and the upper stories of your home will get hotter faster than the lower stories.
- Close the shades for any windows that are letting sunlight into your home. It will keep your house from warming up faster than it should.
- Run the fan if you have one and get the air circulating. It will help you feel cooler.
- Avoid unnecessary activity, and refrain from running any electronic devices that could generate heat. Stick to quiet activities like reading or maybe playing a board game if you have enough people in the home with you.
Call Intelligent Air Services to get your faulty air conditioner repaired quickly and efficiently.
Posted in Air Conditioning
Summers in Georgetown, TX are stiflingly hot, but they also feature high humidity that can turn your home into a swamp. A dehumidifier is an easy solution to that problem, and obviously, that’s the primary job that a dehumidifier does in your home. But did you know that it can also help your air conditioner do its job better? High humidity can create a lot of strain in your AC system, leading to higher monthly bills and an increased risk of repair. What kind of strain, specifically? Here’s a breakdown of 3 of the most common.
Ice can form on the evaporator coils because of low refrigerant levels and similar issues, but it can also form when excess humidity in the air condenses and freezes against the coils. The ice insulates the air against the refrigerant in the coils, making it harder for your system to do its job. Over time, that can lead to a cascading series of failures, leading to a significant breakdown.
The drip pan collects condensate and removes it safely from the system. That condensate can overwhelm the pan if high humidity gets involved. Overflow can damage other components in the system, and while some air conditioners will simply shut the system off if that danger exists. That said, you still need to get the issue repaired before your system will run again.
High humidity affects our body by preventing sweat from evaporating off of our skin, making us feel hotter than it actually is. That means we’ll run our air conditioners longer, and raise our rates accordingly. By lowering the humidity levels, we can feel cooler in our homes, and the AC will reap the benefits.
Call Intelligent Air Services for dehumidifier installation and repair
Austin, TX is far too hot in the summertime to go without a reliable AC, and if you’re in the market for a new one, you want to move quickly. Most of us assume that a centralized air conditioner is the only option and indeed, they’re reliable and efficient systems. But you might also want to consider an alternative, such as a ductless AC system. They replace a single unit—which generates cool air in a centralized location and blows it into your home with a series of ducts—with multiple smaller units spaced throughout your home, Each unit is charged with cooling one room or section of the home, distributing the workload across several units. Which one is right for you? That usually depends on the circumstances.
Benefits of Central AC
Centralized systems work best for more modern homes that are equipped to handle a duct system, and for smaller homes that they can cool more readily. They also benefit from cheaper and faster installation, and if you’re installing a new system in the middle of summer, then speed is of the essence. They tend to be less efficient than ductless systems, however, and if problems arise they can deprive your entire house of air conditioning, not just a single room.
Benefits of Ductless AC
Ductless systems cost more to install since you need to put multiple units instead of just one. On the other hand, they usually cost less to run, since you can cool only those parts of the home that you’re occupying. (Bigger houses tend to benefit from that more than smaller ones.) They also let you tailor the temperature in each room to suit your tastes, setting it to one temperature in the living room and another in the kitchen. And of course, it can do the job without the use of ducts, which may be a requirement with your home.
Call Intelligent Air Services for quality air conditioning installation, no matter which kind of system you have!
Manor, TX gets hot and humid in the summer, which makes the perfect breeding ground for germs and bacteria. They flourish in quiet parts of your home, taking advantage of muggy conditions to multiple and spread. Biological contaminants can quickly spread illness through your home, as well as contributing to that stale, stagnant feeling that comes every summer.
The best way to fight these creepy crawlies is with a UV air purifier, installed in your HVAC system by a trained professional. Not only will it curtail the spread of bacteria in your home, but it will lead to a more comfortable environment overall. Here’s a quick breakdown of how it all works.
Ultra-Violet Light
If you remember high school science class, you know that ultra-violet light exists beyond our ability to see. It appears in sunlight in large amounts, which causes our skin to tan and burn if we stay out in it for long. At lower levels, UV light bulbs are used at concerts and amusement parks to make white clothes glow in the dark, It’s perfectly harmless in those cases, at least to human beings and pets. But for single-celled organisms, the effects are lethal: killing them on contact or rendering them incapable of reproducing.
Doing the Most Good
A UV light in your home will only affect the air it passes through. A UV purifier is thus placed at the apex of your ducts, where the air in your home cycles through when your AC is running. As it does, the germs and bacteria in it pass through the light and are sterilized, scrubbing your home air clean and elevating the cleanliness and health levels of your household accordingly.
Intelligent Air Services can install, repair, replace and maintain a high-quality UV air purifier for your home!
We get a lot of calls for new air conditioning installation this time of year, as temperatures climb in Round Rock, TX and an older system may find itself overwhelmed by high monthly bills and repeated repair calls. Installing a new system this time of year makes all kinds of sense since it will allow you to enjoy the benefits of improved efficiency and a brand new warranty for the remainder of the summer.
But once you’ve made the decision to install a new system, you have to factor in certain details to make sure it fits the needs of your home. Chief among them is the air conditioner’s size, and by that we mean its power output. A trained technician needs to balance that factor against the specifics of your home.
Why Sizing Counts
You can probably guess that an undersized air conditioner is not going to do the job. It will work way too hard—raising bills and the chances of a breakdown in the process—and won’t ever cool your house properly. You may be surprised to learn, however, that oversized air conditioners have a similar problem, known as short-cycling. Air conditioners use much more power turning on and turning off than they do simply running. An overpowered air conditioner will cool the house too soon, turning on and off multiple times throughout the day.
How to Size Your Home
A trained technician can conduct an audit of your home to find the “Goldilocks spot” for your air conditioner: neither too large nor too small but just right. Square footage is the basis of those equations, but it can also involve such factors as sunlight exposure and the amount of insulation in your walls. When the audit is done, you know exactly how large your new AC must be to do the job.
Call on Intelligent Air Services to install a new air conditioner in your home!
Summers in Austin, TX are as brutal as they come, and your air conditioner may be the best (and only) defense against triple-digit heat. When trouble arises, you need to address it quickly, and unfortunately, not every problem can be found in the air conditioner itself. The ducts, for example, can often spring leaks or suffer breaches that you can’t always notice because they’re hidden behind the walls of your home. They’re trouble because they pull conditioned air out or bring unconditioned air in, blunting the effectiveness of your AC and raising the possibility of both higher bills and added strain to other components of the system.
The good news is that a qualified technician can usually perform duct sealing services to correct the problem. The bad news is that you can’t call one in until you realize there’s a problem, and since your ducts are often hidden from sight, you may be completely unaware of the problem until it’s caused considerable damage.
Here’s a quick list of some signs that you need duct sealing, which can help you stymie that tendency and spot the problem earlier than you otherwise might.
- Cold spots. Cold spots are created when conditioned air blows out of the breach and onto a nearby wall or some other location in the home.
- Higher bills. The lost energy from a duct breach can be spotted in unexpected spikes in your monthly energy bills.
- Low airflow. A breach means that the conditioned air won’t get to the vent like it’s supposed to, reducing the flow of air.
- Noises. Air moving through the breach may cause a humming, groaning, or buzzing noise, which will stop when you turn off your system.
- Excessive Dust. The dust pulled into the breach will mix with your conditioned air.
Call Intelligent Air Services for quality duct sealing.
Posted in Air Conditioning
One of the biggest mistakes we see homeowners make during the summer is turning on their air conditioner before they leave for the day and letting it run in an empty house. There’s actually some logical reason for thinking that this is a good idea, and no one wants to come home to a wall of heat, then have to wait while the system cools it off. But there are ways around that problem that don’t involve wasting so much energy, and while it may seem more efficient to turn on the system in the cool of the morning, the opposite is actually true. Cooling an empty house makes no sense, even in a town as hot in the summer as Georgetown, TX. The good news is that making the right adjustment isn’t hard at all.
Why People Think It’s a Good Idea
Again, there are some logical reasons to think that running your air conditioner in an empty house all day is a good idea. ACs use much more energy starting up than they do simply running, so why wouldn’t you just start it in the morning, when temperatures are cooler? Add to that the convenience of coming home to a comfortable home, and the habit can become very hard to break.
Why It Isn’t
In point of fact, however, running the AC for hours on end costs much more than the tiny bit of extra energy consumed by cooling down a hot house when you return home. Furthermore, it isn’t necessary. Almost all thermostats come with basic programming features, allowing you to turn the air on shortly before you arrive home, and have the house cool and comfortable without spending all that energy. The only possible exception is if you have pets at home on a hot day, but even then, setting the thermostat to 80 degrees, or even 85 will keep them comfortable without costing you too much in monthly bills.
Call Intelligent Air Services for air conditioning services in Georgetown.
We haven’t even hit summer yet officially in Manor, TX, and already we’ve seen our air conditioners put to the test. That’s only going to get worse as we head towards July, and when problems arise, you need to treat them now before the weather gets even hotter. Among the most common problems encountered by air conditioning systems is leaking refrigerant, which can severely impact the system’s ability to function.
Why Is It a Problem?
Your air conditioner needs a very specific type of refrigerant in a very specific amount in order to do its job. It circulates through an endless loop that first converts it into liquid form (releasing heat outside of your home), and then expands it back to gaseous form (pulling heat from the nearby air, which can then be blown into your house with a fan). Leaks aren’t supposed to spring up in such a system. Unfortunately, they do. When the cooling process is thrown off, ice forms on the coils, coming between the remaining refrigerant and the air it’s supposed to cool. As a result, your monthly bills will go up and the added strain will cause a more serious breakdown elsewhere in the system. And the problem will only escalate as more refrigerant leaks out of the system.
Call in Repairs Immediately
You can spot leaking refrigerant through hissing or bubbling noises, unexpected rises in your cooling bills and from frost forming on the system’s coils. Never attempt to scrap the frost off. it will only reform, and you could easily damage the coils in the process. Instead, turn the system off and call in a repair service immediately. Only a trained professional can safely handle refrigerant: pinpointing the source of the leak, and then sealing it and recharging the refrigerant to its prescribed levels.
Call Intelligent Air Services to stop a refrigerant leak.
We trumpet the values of geothermal cooling here simply because of all the benefits it provides. It draws on the ambient temperature of the earth itself, which is an infinitely renewable resource and consumes little energy. You need only pay for a small amount of electricity to run the rest of the system, which not only saves you money on monthly bills but helps you do your part to keep Mother Earth green and healthy. Understanding how geothermal cooling works can do a great deal as far as clarifying those benefits go.
Underground
Geothermal cooling systems are often expensive to install because you need to bury a length of the looped coil under the ground, which means construction equipment and manpower. There’s a reason for that. Once you dig down below 10 or 12 feet, the temperature in the Earth never changes no matter how hot or cold it gets above the surface: remaining steady at about 58 degrees. The system pumps a mixture of water and antifreeze through the coils, which facilitate a heat exchange with the ground. In the summer, it pulls heat from the air in your home and releases it into the ground, keeping you cool and comfortable without having to expend any fuel.
Who Benefits
Not every home can benefit from geothermal cooling and many will do quite well with more traditional forms of energy. Geothermal systems work well for home with an eye on the big picture: saving money over time in exchange for a larger up-front investment. You also need space: a larger piece of property tends to work best, though the coils can be installed vertically as well as horizontally. They usually benefit large houses too, which can use all the help they can get to keep air conditioning costs down.
Call Intelligent Air Services for more on geothermal cooling systems in Austin, TX!