Why Is It Important to Change Air Filters on Air Conditioners and Furnaces?

January 14th, 2022

Clogged air filters are probably the leading cause of breakdown for air conditioners and HVAC systems. That’s the main reason why changing air filters is so important.

Air conditioners and heaters depend on airflow. With impeded airflow, the system doesn’t work as well, and problems arise. Here are four reasons why it’s so important to change your air filter, and what could happen if you don’t.

4 Reasons to Change the Air Filter on Your AC / Furnace

1. Changing the Air Filter Saves You Money

Yes, you have to pay for the air filter. But the more clogged your air filter gets, the harder your system has to work. That means it is using more energy to produce and push the same amount of cool or warm air. Using more energy means you pay more for the same benefit. That’s a bad deal.

And in case you’re wondering, the air filter does get used in both summer and winter because the same fan moves the air either way. The mechanism for producing the warm or cool air may be different, but the fan that moves it and the filter the air passes through is the same.

Changing the air filter also saves money because it extends the healthy life of your HVAC system. And as you can imagine, air conditioning and heating repairs cost a lot more than buying an air filter every few months.

2. Changing the Air Filter Improves Performance

As time goes by, air filters will get clogged by various types of debris. This makes it harder to produce the same amount of warm or cool air.

This means, especially in the extreme hot and cold months, a fresh air filter will help your home warm up and cool down faster than it otherwise would. If it seems like it’s taking longer to warm up or cool down your house lately, there’s a good chance your air filter is the main culprit.

And by the way, if you want us to come out and do a maintenance check, we can also show you where your air filter is and how to change it. Sometimes, it is a little tricky. Here’s a quick guide on how to change your air filter yourself.

3. Changing the Air Filter Improves Indoor Air Quality

There are all kinds of pollutants and particulates floating around inside and outside. A good air filter will capture many of these and thus improve your air quality. Especially if you have kids, elderly residents, or people with medical conditions such as asthma or allergies, pristine air quality is a must.

Consistent replacement of your air filter is a low cost way to make a big difference in your air quality.

A saturated air filter will struggle to corral things like dust, spores, pollen, pet dander, hair, and microorganisms. Plus, all that gunk can collect moisture and lead to mold growth. If the mold gets in your ducts and the inner workings of your HVAC system, now you’ve got a serious and much more costly problem, for your health and your pocketbook.

4. Changing the Air Filter Reduces Your Environmental Footprint

Because a clean air filter allows your air conditioner and furnace to work more efficiently at heating up and cooling down the house, you will use less energy and thus reduce the cost your HVAC system is putting on the environment – especially if you’re relying on gas or electric power.

What Happens If You Don’t Change Your Air Filter?

If you neglect to change your air filter frequently enough, a number of problems will begin to mount over time.

First, because your air conditioner and heater will have to work harder, this extra strain will increase the wear and tear on the system and can cause it to overheat and break down. Again, in our experience, clogged air filters are the number one cause of costly and expensive repairs for HVAC systems. Extending the useful life of your system saves thousands of dollars.

Also, very old air filters can start to break down themselves, and this may release fibers into the air handling system. These fibers can interfere with the functionality of the HVAC system and require expensive repair and maintenance.

And, as already mentioned, not changing your air filter will make your home take longer to heat up or cool down, increasing your costs for no extra benefit.

The health problems that can be caused by the buildup of mold are well-known, and if mold is infesting your HVAC system, then your family is breathing unhealthy air. You can prevent most or all of this simply by regularly changing your air filter.

One way to tell if it’s well past time to change your filter is if there’s a buildup of dust near your vents, including on furniture near the vents. If you see this, then your air filter is probably well past due for replacement.

How Often Should You Change Your Air Filter?

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this. Energy Star recommends a minimum of changing your air filter every three months. Some experts recommend every month.

But really this depends on several factors, such as the type of air filter you use, and how often you use your air conditioner and heater.

In the mild climate of the Pacific Northwest and Snohomish and North King County, we have pretty temperate springs and falls, and many people don’t use their systems at all during those months. There would obviously be no reason to change the filter if it isn’t being used.

But in summer and winter, it probably gets pretty heavy use. So keep an eye on it, and don’t let it sit there unchanged for too long.

As for the type of air filter, lower quality fiberglass air filters need to be replaced more frequently than higher quality ones.

If you want a professional HVAC repair and maintenance technician to come take a look at your system or show you how to change your air filter, feel free to schedule an appointment, and Bob will come out to take a look.

We are often booked several months out, so if you suspect problems with your HVAC system, don’t wait too long to call us!

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Why Get a Heat Pump in the Pacific Northwest?

February 20th, 2020

5 Reasons to Consider Switching to a Heat Pump or Mini-Split

Heating and cooling your home in the Pacific Northwest can be achieved through several different methods.

more efficient energy is one reason why to get a heat pump in the puget sound
Image by Iván Tamás from Pixabay

There are other more specialized options, but your three main choices for heat are natural gas, electric heat, or a heat pump. Each has their various pros and cons, which we may explore in a different article later.

For today, let’s explore the points in favor of a heat pump. First – what is a heat pump?

What Is a Heat Pump and How Does It Work?

A heat pump works much like a refrigerator, using refrigerant to remove heat from one area and move it to another. One of its two main defining characteristics is that it doesn’t generate heat through a heating coil or the burning of some type of fuel. Rather, it compresses and moves warm air absorbed by the refrigerant from the cooler place and transfers that heat to the warmer place.

Your refrigerator works in much the same way. It continually removes the heat from the items you put in your fridge (the cooler place) and transfers it through the refrigerant into the room. That’s why you can feel warm air coming out the bottom of your fridge.

Likewise, a heat pump takes warmth from the air from outside your home in the winter and moves it into your house with the help of an air handler.

A heat pump’s other defining characteristic is that it can go both ways. Unlike a furnace or an air conditioner which can only heat or cool your house, a heat pump can do both.

In the summer, it takes the warmer air from inside your home, and blows it outside, thus cooling the interior. In the fridge comparison, with a heat pump in the summer your house is the refrigerator. In the winter, the rest of the world is the refrigerator.

See an animated presentation of how a heat pump works

The primary reason most people give for not choosing a heat pump is that they don’t work as well in extreme temperatures. Especially in very cold (sub-freezing) temperatures, the heat pump struggles to get enough warm air from the outside to pump into your home.

But here in the Puget Sound area, we don’t generally have temperatures that low, so this is rarely an issue.

5 Reasons to Choose a Heat Pump

1. Uses Less Energy – Saves You $$$

saving on heating costs is one reason why to get a heat pump
Image by Nattanan Kanchanaprat from Pixabay

As you may have already inferred, because the heat pump does not have to generate its own heat, it uses far less energy than a gas or electric furnace. All the heat pump has to do is power the compressor, the fans, and other components to facilitate the transfer of the warm air.

This makes a heat pump much more energy efficient than your other options.

Measurements and studies vary, but your heat pump will probably save you between a third and a half of your home heating energy costs. Other factors can affect this, such as how well insulated and sealed your house is, the size of the house, your preferred temperatures in summer and winter, and other variables.

If you watch our heat pump animation and click on “How efficient is a heat pump?” on the left side, you can see data comparing heat pumps to natural gas, propane, oil, and electric heat. To produce 1 million BTUs, according our data, heat pumps cost far less than the other options.

2. Helps the Environment in Two Ways

First, because you’re not burning fuel to produce energy, a heat pump produces far fewer emissions than something like a gas or oil furnace.

If you’re looking for a way to play your part in curbing climate change by minimizing your carbon footprint, switching from a fossil fuel burning furnace to a heat pump is one of the most high-impact decisions you can make.

According to one source, a heat pump can offset energy produced by burning up to 300 gallons of oil.

Second, because heat pumps use less energy, you will also be drawing less power from your utility to operate the appliance. It runs less often than a furnace, and requires less energy to do so.

So with a heat pump, you are tapping the grid less often, reducing your overall energy usage. The Energy Department estimates that a heat pump can reduce your electricity use by about 50%.

3. Mini Split Style Heat Pumps Do Not Require a Duct System

If your home doesn’t have ducts, that’s not a problem. Heat pumps can adapt to this using a ‘mini-split’ approach. This essentially means the outdoor condenser unit can be hooked up to wall units all around your home.

However, traditional heat pumps require ducting because this is how the air handler moves the heat throughout the home.

4. Heats Your Home Faster

Because the ductless heat pump is just blowing warm air into one room rather than the entire house, individual controls for each room helps keep the comfort level more consistent. With a furnace, the warmest air is the air closest to where it was produced. As it gets farther from the unit, it cools more. So the furnace has to work harder to heat the rooms farthest from it.

The exception to this is if you are demanding large temperature swings from your system. Heat pumps are designed to keep consistent temperatures, not to go back and forth between 55 and 70 every day. If you try to do that, a traditional heat pump will switch to the furnace to heat the house. On the other hand, a mini split or ductless system allows you to heat or cool specific rooms.

5. Technology Continues to Advance

Today’s heat pumps work substantially better than ones produced 30 – 40 years ago.

Now, furnaces and air handlers use variable speed or dual speed motors. This keeps air moving at a consistent speed, which minimizes cool drafts, increases your savings, and make less noise.

Heat pump compressors have also seen vast improvement in their technology. Originally, units only had piston compressors. Then came scroll technology. Now, they are inverter driven, which varies the capacity of the unit and makes it much more efficient and quiet.

Trane and American Standard have worked with Seattle code compliance officials to achieve sound levels once thought impossible. We have units that will keep the decibel levels at 52 or less at full capacity and then lower that to under 40 after 10pm. Seattle and Kirkland have the most strict noise ordinances in the area, which is a huge problem with buildings now being built so close to each other.

Why Choose a Heat Pump?

To be clear – B&C Comfort does not endorse any one heating or cooling solution. All solutions have their pros and cons. What we care about most is that you are happy and comfortable in your home, no matter the season.

If you’re drawn to the idea of a heat pump but are concerned about getting a return on your investment, the question we usually ask is, how long do you plan to live in your home? It generally takes about five years to pay yourself back for switching to a heat pump as opposed to adding a separate air conditioner, assuming you already have a furnace.

More and more people are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprints and be more energy efficient. Heat pumps in the Puget Sound region are one very impactful way to achieve that.

If you’d like to explore switching from your current heating source to a heat pump, reach out to us and we can schedule a home visit to look at your system.

Schedule an In-Home Consultation

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Do I Really Need to Clean My Gas Fireplace?

April 18th, 2019

Do I Really Need to Clean My Gas Fireplace?

do i really need to clean my gas fireplace

Image by Sophie Janotta from Pixabay

It’s a good question. After all, your gas fireplace is a lot simpler than a wood-burning fireplace. No chopping, no carrying wood inside on a freezing day. No spiders in the woodpile. No ash. No hot coals to worry about. And best of all – no trouble starting the fire. Just flip a switch.

So there’s a lot to love about gas fireplaces, and it’s easy to get lulled into complacency and believe you don’t need to clean your gas fireplace either.

The truth is, you do need to clean it, just a lot less often than a wood-burning fireplace. The recommended frequency to clean and maintain a gas fireplace is once per year. If you want to use B&C Comfort and are in our service area (click here and scroll all the way to the end), we are regularly booked out several months in advance, so get on our schedule today.

Schedule my fireplace cleaning

Why You Need to Clean Your Gas Fireplace

But why must we clean our gas fireplaces if they burn so cleanly and make no visible mess?

Here’s the simple answer: all fire (combustion) produces waste products.

In general, the products of combustion are water vapor and carbon dioxide. But it’s not that simple. Water can react to metals and form rust, or combine with certain other chemicals to form corrosive acids, even very mild ones that take years to be noticed (see this article from the Chimney Safety Institute for more)  Carbon dioxide is one of those chemicals – it can combine with water to produce carbonic acid. Your fireplace can also create other waste products such as carbon monoxide, which is a deadline odorless gas.

So regardless of what else might be crawling around in your chimney, venting system, and in the components of your fireplace, over time you will build up soot and other residues.

These residues will collect on the glass doors, the internal fireplace parts, the walls, the fake logs, and in the chimney/venting.

They will affect performance.

They will affect visibility.

They will affect safety.

Over time, an uncleaned gas fireplace will develop clogged or partially clogged gas lines and air passages. The motion of your fans will become inhibited. Small leaks can form.

Nothing works forever without ongoing maintenance. And let’s not forget, you are using this fireplace to burn a fire in your house. So, once a year, it’s a pretty smart move to make sure everything is cleaned and in working order.

Additional Gas Fireplace Maintenance Issues

Besides just the residues and soot collecting on everything, your annual fireplace cleaning is the perfect time to make sure everything else is working properly. Here are a few other items a professional can look at while they’re cleaning your fireplace.

  • Check functionality of thermopile and thermocouple, as applicable
  • Check that venting system is working properly (a major safety issue)
  • Look for chipped or cracked glass doors
  • Evaluate status of ceramic or faux logs – these too wear down over time
  • Do a carbon monoxide test

It takes a trained eye to quickly evaluate the quality and functionality of these and other gas fireplace components.

But in addition to cleaning, it’s very important to keep your fireplace working in perfect shape. It maximizes your energy efficiency, maintains optimal safety, and keeps your fireplace looking great.

If you live in our service area (scroll to the end of this page to find out) and haven’t cleaned your fireplace in a long time (or ever), now’s a good time to get on our busy schedule.

Schedule your next fireplace cleaning

 

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7 Reasons Your Home Heater Is Blowing Cold Air & What To Do

November 8th, 2018

Home Heater Blowing Cold Air? Here’s What It Could Mean

7 Possible Reasons Your Home Heater/Furnace Is Blowing Cold Air

A friend of ours bought a new house recently. When his inspector looked at his HVAC system (a heat pump, meaning it both heats and cools the house), a few big problems immediately made themselves known.

new homeowner's heater blowing cold air and ac was blowing warm airWhen he turned on the heater, the outdoor unit didn’t seem to be working right, but the indoor unit, an air handler, came on and seemed to heat the house. Though on closer inspection, the heat seemed pretty weak. When he turned on the air conditioner, warm air came out.

So, when the new homeowner called an HVAC specialist (not us, because he was outside our service area – click here and scroll down to see if you’re in it), he learned what was really happening.

A system error in the controls of the heat pump was forcing an automatic system shutdown just seconds after it started. That was tripping on the air handler, which was supposed to be only for emergency heat. Even more strange, the previous owners had rewired the system somehow so the air handler came on every time, even for air conditioning. Hence the hot air.

But the heat pump was also just very old, and repairing it would have cost nearly the same as just getting a new one, which is what they ended up doing.

Why tell this story? Because it illustrates just one of many reasons why a heater might blow cold air, and an air conditioner might blow hot air.

7 Reasons Your Heater Blows Cold Air/AC Blows Hot Air

There are many reasons an HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) system might stop working. But all you have to work with are the symptoms. The heater’s blowing cold, or the AC is blowing hot. Here are just a few things that could mean:

1) Dead Batteries in Thermostat

Seems silly, but you’d be surprised how often this has happened. You’re standing there pushing buttons trying to heat up the house, but it’s just not working. You can hear it blowing, but no heat is coming out. Sometimes this happens simply because your batteries have died. (This problem depends in part on the type of thermostat, of course).

It’s also possible you have it on the wrong setting, such as ‘fan’ as opposed to ‘heat’. Again, this depends on your specific type of thermostat.

2) Clogged Air Filter

filthy clogged air filters are one possible reason your heater is blowing cold air
For a heat pump or heater to produce warm air, air must flow easily through the filter. Otherwise it has to work a lot harder just to pull the air, which means you’ll get less warm air coming out than you should. Likewise for the air conditioner. The harder it has to work to pull air through the filter, the less efficient it will be.

If energy efficiency is as important to you as heating or cooling your house, making sure you have a clean air filter is a critical troubleshooting and maintenance step.

3) Interrupted Startup Sequence

This was part of the problem our friend was dealing with. His heat pump was starting up and then shutting off immediately, and the emergency heat was taking over. When he had a professional look into why this was happening, he learned it would be an expensive repair job on an outdated heat pump.

4) Improper Installation

The previous owners in our friend’s house probably realized their heat pump was failing, so they rewired the system in a convoluted way to get around the problem, rather than deal with it properly. Their improper installation thus led to the air conditioner blowing hot air.
an improper installation led to this ac blowing warm air

5) Dead Circuit Board

Maybe it got shorted out. Maybe it just died of old age or malfunction. But a dead circuit board ends your furnace’s attempt to heat your house real quick.

6) Worn Down or Busted Motors

Motors that turn the fans and make the conversion process from warm to cold (or cold to warm) work right can get old and rusty, or break down for other reasons. If that happens, your heater (or AC) will not produce the temperature of air you want it to.

If you hear that irritating screeching sound when your system turns on, this could be the reason (though it’s not the only reason that happens).

7) Damaged Ducts

It could be that your heater is working just fine. If your ducts have cracks or worse, then the cold air blowing into your house might be coming straight from outside right into your ducts, mixed in with the warm air your perfectly functional furnace is producing.

What Can I Do If My Heater Is Blowing Cold Air?

You’ve got three basic options.

three options for what to do if your heater is blowing cold air
First – make it worse. That’s what our friend’s former homeowners appear to have done. They worked around a failed heat pump by making the emergency heat the main heat. This rendered the AC useless. And, it increased their heating costs a ton, because the air handler is a far more expensive way to heat a house than the much more efficient heat pump.

Second – test out the simple explanations. Check the air filter. Check the thermostat. You might even try turning your circuit breaker off and back on. These simple fixes might solve the problem, saving you lots of trouble, frustration, and expense.

Third – hire a professional. If your heater is blowing cold air, and it’s not one of the first two possible explanations on this list, then you’ll need a specialist to at least come and take a look. You might be able to tell if your ducts have a leak, but fixing them is another issue.

The last five items on the list above require a professional or a new furnace or heat pump to fix them.

If you need a professional and you live in our service area, we’d love to help.

Click the link below, scroll down to see if you’re in our service area, and if you are, tell us what’s going on with your HVAC system.

Help Fix My Heater/Heat Pump

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