On school breaks my little sibling loves to come and stay with me rather than my parents! I get it, my parents make him work, but my dad regularly will have my siblings do chores and my mom will get on him about cleaning his room.

With me, I just let him run wild.

I cook for him, do his laundry and do whatever he wants at night. I need to start cracking down about how he treats my HVAC device though. I can tell he doesn’t pay energy bills by how he acts, he will set my thermostat to a ridiculously low temperature in the summer. When he gets too cold, my sibling will just open a window, turn off my AC! In the winter he occasionally will open a window and snow will get in my house. It also is pretty usual for him to then leave as well. So I come home to my HVAC running on high and the window wide open. He usually forgets to lock the door on the way out too. When my sibling lives with me, my energy bills double. He will leave all the lights on, the television on and eat all my food too. What am I supposed to do though? Until my sibling has a home of his own and starts paying for things like heating and air, he won’t get it. He doesn’t understand how bad it is paying more currency for heating and A/C. When the time does come, I will make sure to stay at his place and open windows with the heating and A/C running.

Cooling technician

What am I supposed to do though? Until my brother has a house of his own and starts paying for things like heating and air, he won’t get it

On university breaks my little brother enjoys coming and staying with me rather than my parents. I get it, my parents make him work, my mom consistently will have my brother do awful chores and my dad will get on him about cleaning his room, and with me, I just let him run wild. I cook for him, do his laundry and do whatever he wants at night. I need to start cracking down about how he treats my HVAC equipment though. I can tell he doesn’t pay utility bills by how he acts, he will set my control equipment to a ridiculously low temperature in the summer. When he gets too cold, my brother will just open a window, turn off my AC! In the winter time he periodically will open a window and snow will get in my house. It also is pretty regular for him to then leave the house as well. So I come home to my HVAC running on high and the window wide open. He usually forgets to lock the door on the way out too. When my brother lives with me, my utility bills double. He will leave all the lights on, the cable on and eat all my food too. What am I supposed to do though? Until my brother has a house of his own and starts paying for things like heating and air, he won’t get it. He doesn’t understand how awful it is paying more money for HVAC. When the time does come, I will make sure to stay at his place and open windows with the HVAC running.

air duct

On school breaks my little sibling likes to come and stay with me rather than our parents.

I get it, our parents make him work, my dad typically will have our sibling do chores and our mom will get on him about cleaning his room.

With me, I just let him run wild. I cook for him, do his laundry and do whatever he wants in the evening. I need to start cracking down about how he treats my HVAC device though. I can tell he doesn’t pay energy bills by how he acts. He will set our temperature control to a ridiculously low temperature in the summer. When he gets too cold, my sibling will just open a window, turn off our AC! In the winter time he sometimes will open a window and snow will get in our house. It also is pretty regular for him to then leave the home as well, so I come home to my HVAC running on high and the window wide open. He usually forgets to lock the door on the way out too. When my sibling lives with me, my energy bills double. He will leave all the lights on, the TV on and eat all our food too. What am I supposed to do though? Until my sibling has a house of his own and starts paying for things like heating and air, he won’t get it. He doesn’t understand how annoying it is paying more money for heating and A/C. When the time does come, I will make sure to stay at his place and open windows with the HVAC running.

Digital thermostat

On college breaks my little brother loves to come and stay with me rather than my parents.

• I get it, my parents make him work.

My dad constantly will have my brother do awful chores and my mom will get on him about cleaning his room. With me, I just let him run wild. I cook for him, do his laundry and do whatever he wants at night. I need to start cracking down about how he treats my HVAC unit though. I can tell he doesn’t pay energy bills by how he acts. He will set my thermostat to a ridiculously low temperature in the summer. When he gets too cold, my brother will just open a window. Turn off my AC! In the winter he sometimes will open a window and snow will get in my house. It also is pretty common for him to then leave the house as well. So I come home to my HVAC running on high and the window wide open. He usually forgets to lock the door on the way out too. When my brother lives with me, my energy bills double. He will leave all the lights on, the television on and eat all my food too. What am I supposed to do though? Until my brother has a home of his own and starts paying for things like heating and air, he won’t get it. He doesn’t understand how awful it is paying more money for HVAC. When the time does come, I will make sure to stay at his place and open windows with the HVAC running.

Air conditioning install

The reason that people believe that their ceiling fans save energy, if because fans used to help AC’s work better.

Ceiling fans use much less energy to run than air conditioners, so it would seem like a simple conclusion that ceiling fans save energy. In most parts of the country, fans don’t provide enough cooling to replace air conditioners. You may have heard that fans don’t cool rooms, they cool people. Fans work for the same reason why wind feels cold; it’s called the windchill effect. Moving air makes you feel cooler because it assists your body’s natural cooling process through evaporation. The more air is moving, the more moisture can evaporate from your skin, making you feel cooler. A ceiling fan does not actually lower the temperature in a room. This is why you should not leave a fan on in an unoccupied room because it has no effect and would be wasting energy. Since a ceiling fans job is to cool people, it accomplishes that just fine. It’s just not a replacement for air conditioning, especially in hotter climates. But you can use them together to create better cooling conditions and possibly save energy. Since fans circulate the air, it makes the temperature more even across the room, and also adds the windchill effect. The reason that people believe that their ceiling fans save energy, if because fans used to help AC’s work better. The reason is that modern air conditioners are so much more efficient, they don’t suffer the same problems as early models. Unless your AC unit was installed before 2000, you don’t need to correct temperature variance issues with a fan. Modern ACs are designed to have proper air circulation for the space they are in.

 

Do ceiling fans save energy?

One of the smartest things I did was sell my old car and get a new one from a dealership.

On top of that, I paid to include five years of maintenance, labor, and parts. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars every month to fix a slowly dying car, I can put the same amount of money towards paying off a new car that will eventually be in my name. In the meantime the car dealership handles all of the service work and repairs for free, which means I never have to worry about my source of transportation. This one change made me more reliable for getting to work everyday, as well as removing a large source of continuous stress. This car maintenance contract encouraged me to find a similar sort of service plan with my heating and cooling supplier. I live in a region where our winter and summer seasons are always intense. We get temperatures below zero during the winter season that necessitate strong indoor heat each and every day. When the temperatures get into the 80s, 90s, and 100s in the summer, I am using my air conditioner as frequently as my furnace. Using HVAC equipment to this degree necessitates regular maintenance and service, just like my car. And like the warranty I have with my car dealership, I now have a service contract with my HVAC company. Aside from repairs, it covers regular upkeep and maintenance like filter changes, condensate and coil cleaning, ductwork vacuuming, coolant refills, and pressure tests for recalibration. Just having a professional to properly clean my evaporator coil and my condensate line are enough to justify having the maintenance contract with the HVAC supplier.

 

furnace filter

There are some things that simply make a ton of noise when they’re running.

I had a vacuum for a few years that my neighbors would complain about.

The thing is, I live in a house; so that means it’s so loud they’re hearing it through my wall and into their window. To top it off, our houses are at least 20 yards apart. I think the vacuum alone was starting to give me tinnitus. I’m also used to having a loud washer that sometimes makes banging noises when the load of laundry is spinning out. Although I should probably replace it soon, it’s hard to bring myself to spend the money when it still technically works. However, there are some things that should be looked at immediately once you start hearing loud noises during operation. A car engine is a good example, but sometimes it’s not so obvious. HVAC condensers are the outdoor components of standard split style air conditioners. They’re supposed to make noise while they run, but they shouldn’t sound like an old refrigerator compressor while they run. Since they have the same kind of compressors just larger, hearing these old refrigerator sounds will give you an indication that you need your condenser inspected. My HVAC supplier had to install a new compressor after the original started to get really loud every time my entire air conditioner turned on. I was lucky that it was covered under the manufacturer warranty because it happened within the first 10 years of ownership. My neighbor has the same exact problem, but his HVAC supplier is refusing to fix it. I tell him that it gets louder every week and he just nods his head in agreement.

Heating industry

At 16, I wanted a huge house when I got older.

I wanted to make lots of money and have a four bedroom house on hundreds of acres of beautiful woodlands.

My dream careers vacillated constantly, as I wanted to be a lawyer for awhile, then an engineer, and also a doctor at some point. My interests were all over the place, although I guess that is common for kids and teenagers. Even once I got to college and decided to study psychology out of a genuine interest, my path took a lot of unexpected twists and turns. I lost a lot of close family members in a private plane crash during a trip they took to central America to look for a new vacation home. Because of the purpose of the trip, it immediately made me hate money and the pursuit of wealth. They didn’t need a third vacation home, but they wanted one anyway. Before I knew it, I was looking at listings for RVs on the internet. I decided I wanted to live in an RV and drive around the country. Since I already had a job working remotely as a writer for a sports blog, I could make enough to get by with this lifestyle. Part of me was afraid to pull the trigger and make the change, but I’m glad I did. Although I had to buy a window air conditioner for the RV I purchased, it has otherwise been extremely reliable. Not to mention window air conditioners are no slouches. They’re a lot more energy efficient than portable air conditioners and they don’t waste conditioned air to cool their compressors down.

heated floors

I’ve been starting to cook a lot more lately now that I’m home often.

When I was working out of the house and driving 15 miles to get to my job everyday, I stopped a lot for coffee and food at varying times of the day.

It wasn’t until I started working remotely last year and staying home for days on end before I realized how much money I was spending on drinks and food every week while I was out of the house. And when I compared those costs to what I was spending at the grocery store to eat at home, I was shocked at how much I was now saving. Just making my coffee at home ended up saving me upwards to $45 a month. When I factored in the cost of fast food and take out, it was shocking to see the waste. But all of my home cooking hasn’t come without a price, albeit one I would have never anticipated ahead of time. Apparently a lot of grease is going airborne from all of the stir frying I’m doing in my kitchen. My heating and cooling technician showed me the orange hue of my air conditioner filter the last time he was here servicing the HVAC system. He recommended using a denser filter to prevent any excess grease from reaching the inside of the air handler. I’m also getting price quotes on adding a ventilation hood above my stovetop to pull all of the steam and vapors out of my house so they’re not always going into my air return and through the a/c filter. This will lengthen the life of each filter and add another layer of protection between the grease and my evaporator coil.

 

furnace filter

Both of us have a big window in our good room that faces to the west, then last summer, it became a big issue during the summertime because it started heating the good room up so much in the late morning & the evening… When the sunlight would shine into the room, it created almost a yellowhouse effect & no matter how much all of us would turn the air conditioning down, it would keep on getting hotter & hotter in there! It got to the point where all of us would have to put electric fans in the good room to move the air around & yet it would still seem super sizzling & appreciate the temperatures would just keep on rising! I wasn’t honestly sure what all of us were going to do about it & so I finally ended up calling our local Heating, Ventilation, & A/C corporation.

Both of us love that room & so not being able to use it all summer time because it was too sizzling & stuffy in there just wasn’t an option for us.

When I talked to the guy at the Heating, Ventilation, & A/C corporation, he said that getting something called a ductless mini split air conditioning system plan might be a good fit for us. With an air conditioning system plan appreciate a ductless mini split, you don’t have to run additional air duct & it will supply lots of extra cooling to the room. Other than putting blackout curtains on the windows, that might be the only option that all of us have! I have made an appointment with the Heating, Ventilation, & A/C corporation so a professional is coming out early next month to do an estimate for us.

Information here