Some life-saving tips that will ensure you have your air conditioner in perfect condition for a carefree summer.
Beach vacations, barbecues, and pool parties are the things that make summer special. But one thing can easily ruin all the fun for you—if your air conditioner breaks down when the temperature is at its highest. You need to take good care of your HVAC system throughout the year to prevent such a disaster. The following tips will ensure that you have a nice, cool home to get back to after all the fun activities out in the scorching heat.
1.Schedule Annual Maintenance Checks
The best thing you can do to ensure the proper functioning of your air conditioner is to find a reliable HVAC company to clean and inspect your system at regular intervals. As the saying goes, “care is better than cure,” so rather than trying to find a place to repair your air conditioner when it breaks down you should start maintaining it. Reliable air conditioning repairs in humid places during summer are hard to come by.
To avoid the hassle of trying to find a place to repair your air conditioner during the most humid days of summer, you should call for experts to do maintenance checks seasonally. Before you end up having a broken air conditioning unit during the peak months of the year, experts will help you understand and identify possible problems. Make sure to get your unit checked during spring because it`ll be before the peak season, which means a lower cost for you.
2. Clean and Change Your Air Filters Regularly
Taking proper care of your filters by changing and clearing them regularly is the easiest and most effective thing you can do to keep your A/C unit healthy. Try and find the best kind of filter for your air conditioner, and follow the proper guidelines for cleaning or changing it.
If you use disposable filters, note down the date when the filter is due for a change. Try to make checking your filter a regular chore just like paying your rent, credit card bills, or any other chore.
3. Regularly Inspect Your Wiring
Another way to get optimum performance from your air conditioner is to check the wiring in the condensing unit for any signs of overheating or wear. Always remember to check that you have turned off the air conditioner before you begin. If you see damaged wires, call a professional to repair them.
4. Ensuring A Clean Outside Compressor
Plants, tall grasses, weeds, and old leaves from winter all can block the airflow of your air conditioner, thus resulting in your A/C not working properly or at its highest efficiency. So, keep the area around the compressor tidy and neat to make sure that nothing gets in the way of the system’s ability to deliver at its peak output.
5. Let the Unit Rest While You’re Away
Any system that is constantly running will lose its efficiency faster and require replacement earlier than a system that is used wisely. Using your air conditioner wisely will also lower your monthly energy bills. To ensure that you’re not becoming too dependent on your air conditioner, try to follow these steps:
- Upgrade your system to a smart thermostat. You`ll be able to control your thermostat from anywhere with a smartphone. Additionally, you can make custom cooling schedules and avoid wasting power when no one is home.
- Generally, in humid places people tend to keep their A/C unit running to ensure that when they come back, they`ll be back to a cooled-down home. Prevent this waste by using your smartphone to turn on the unit before you get back.
- Make sure your ceiling fans are turning counterclockwise and use them as much as you can in occupied rooms; that`ll give you the option of setting the thermostat higher without losing your comfort.
6. Drink plenty of cold drinks and beverages
You must drink plenty of water to prevent dehydration, particularly during the hot and humid summers. Consume nutritious, chilled items along with fresh fruit, veggies, and hummus. By doing so you`ll be cool from the inside out, which will lessen your dependency on your A/C unit. By eating fresh produce, you will use your A/C less as you will not have to deal with heat radiating from cooking appliances.
7. Save Up to Buy a New Air Conditioner
If you are concerned about the efficiency of an old air conditioning unit, then it is almost certainly time to buy a new and efficient air conditioner. Undoubtedly, air conditioning plays an important role in any building construction budget and accounts for a major chunk of any building’s annual energy consumption, so you need to look for a unit that has the ENERGY STAR label. These are the most efficient models on the market. I know it might seem like a large investment but you’ll thank yourself later. A new unit will save you a lot of money in repairs and you won’t have to go through the trouble of finding a repair shop every once in a while.
Lastly, I can say that maintaining or taking care of air conditioners can be a hectic job. And living in a humid part of the country makes it doubly important for you to ensure that your air conditioners are in perfect working condition. It can be so troublesome that we might start wondering if we could structure our home in such a way that does not require air conditioning. But then again, we realize the importance of air conditioning in our life. To enjoy this necessity, we need to maintain it as advised above to ensure a relaxed summer.
