Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning Blog

Month: November 2018

Every year, Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning accepts nominations for local families in need of a new furnace. We accept nominations from mid-October through mid-November and announce the winner shortly after Thanksgiving. This year, we had an overwhelming number of well-deserving nominees, which shows the need within our community to reach out to our neighbors to help when we can.

The winner of the free furnace was a local woman with years of medical issues and a passion to help others. She lives in a 40-year-old home in Laporte that still operates on the original furnace. Here is a snippet of the nomination letter we received from her former daughter in law:

“She has raised 3 children as a single mother and domestic violence survivor. She has been in a wheelchair for over 20 years, but that has never stopped her and hardly slows her down. She has an auto-immune disease that gnarls her joints and bones much like Rheumatoid Arthritis, but has never been diagnosed to a particular name. It is an idiopathic disease in which her own body attacks its own joints and bones for an unknown reason. This has brought her tremendous pain throughout her life. She has never felt sorry for herself or let her disabilities take her to a victim mentality. … I remember about 6 years ago, in the summer, I stopped by after work and found her on the front porch, in her wheelchair, sanding the paint on her house and deck with the one good arm she had! I asked her what on Earth she was doing?! She simply said, sanding the house and the deck for a fresh coat of paint that I plan to do over the next few weeks. We laughed and I offered to help her, but ended up visiting with her instead. She didn’t need my help and has always valued conversation and time with her family over everything else! … She has shared her home with so many in need, even though she has very little to give. … She continues to clean her home and even painted her living room walls from her wheelchair this past year. This is a woman with so many reasons to lay down and give up, but she continues to have hope day after day!”

We are excited to be able to give back to her and provide her comfort in her home. She is certainly well-deserving of this giveaway.

From our family to yours, we wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season!

Twitter

Winters in Colorado are not to be trifled Ductless-Woman-300x244with. When temperatures drop and the days grow shorter, your best ally is a great heating system. Hopefully, you’ve got one installed in your home already, and it is ready to go at a moment’s notice. Or, more realistically at this point, it is ready to run and run and run for the foreseeable future. Of course, it is entirely possible you’ll need to replace your heater unexpectedly or that you are simply planning ahead for a heating replacement in the spring.

Whatever the case may be, we encourage you to weigh your options carefully so you wind up with the perfect heating system for your needs. Just because you’ve always used the same type of heater does not mean you have to continue using the same type of heater, after all. A ductless heating system may be what you’ve always wanted, even if you were not aware of it until now!

Why Skip the Ductwork?

There are a few reasons why you may want to forgo the use of ductwork when heating your home.

First of all, you may not have ductwork previously installed. Maybe you had an old boiler that used a radiant heating system or baseboards to heat your home. Those systems are great, but you may want to take advantage of forced air heating instead. Rather than install new ductwork in an existing property, you can retrofit your home with a ductless mini split with much less hassle.

Alternatively, you may want to avoid the use of ductwork in order to also avoid the inefficiency and air quality issues that can stem from leaky ductwork. Ideally, your ductwork would be expertly installed and then never run into any issues. Even if your ductwork is installed and designed properly every step of the way, however, chances are an issue will develop eventually. That’s just the reality that we live in.

There Are Many Other Benefits to Consider

The major one being that, when you heat your home with a ductless mini split, you’re using a heat pump. Like other heat pumps, ductless systems do not generate new heat in order to heat your home. Instead, they use the refrigerant cycle to exploit the heat transfer principle. This is a fancy way of saying your system will use existing heat in the air outside in order to heat your home with great energy efficiency.

In the summer, the ductless mini split evaporates refrigerant in the indoor coils in order to remove heat from the air in your home. That’s what makes your home cooler. In the winter, refrigerant evaporates in the outdoor coil. That refrigerant absorbs heat from the air outside and is then compressed to boost its thermal energy. After traveling indoors, the refrigerant is condensed and the heat it releases is used to heat your home. Because the ductless blowers are all controlled independently of one another, you can also easily maintain different temperatures in different areas of your home, further boosting efficiency while living more comfortably!

Schedule your HVAC services in Loveland, CO with Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning. Big enough to serve, small enough to care.

Twitter

Yes, we would love to tell you how you can Trouble with your Furnacecompletely avoid problems with your heating system. No, we cannot tell you how you can completely avoid problems with your heating system. Nobody can. Well, nobody honestly can. Why not? Because there is no such thing as a 100% reliable heater! If you find someone telling you otherwise, then you need to talk to somebody else. Don’t give such dishonest individuals your attention, let alone your money! We can, however, tell you how to spot signs of heating system trouble early on.

It may seem like a weak consolation prize, but catching problems early is definitely in your best interest. There are plenty of warning signs that you may notice, provided that you know what it is that you are looking for. If and when you notice any of these signs of trouble with your furnace, contact a member of our team right away. You can always count on our staff for exceptional HVAC services in Windsor.

How’s the Heating Output?

Okay, so this is an obvious one, but trust us—a lot of homeowners ignore obvious signs of trouble so long as their furnaces are working “well enough.” If you ask us, though, well enough is never good enough for our clients. So don’t put up with subpar heating output!

Does it seem like the air coming from your vents just isn’t warm enough, despite the fact that the thermostat is set appropriately? Are there cold spots in your home, while other areas are perfectly comfortable? Anything from combustion issues to leaky ductwork and problems with fans could be to blame. Our technicians diagnose problems accurately before resolving them.

Keep an Eye on Heating Costs

Homeowners can ignore a lot, but they tend to take notice when it’s their wallets that are taking the hit! If the heater is costing an arm and a leg to heat your home, but it used to do so quite affordably, then it is likely that you have a problem setting back your energy efficiency.

Unless you are happy to overpay to heat your home, you’ll want to have the issue resolved as soon as possible. And don’t tell yourself that it’s not that expensive, that repairs aren’t that necessary. The longer you avoid the issue, the more costly those repairs are going to be down the road.

Listen for Signs of Trouble, Too

It’s not all about keeping your eyes open and looking for signs of trouble. You may hear signs of trouble before you see anything is wrong. This is the case with heaters making strange new sounds, or even those making the same old sounds but at much louder levels than usual.

When you hear your heater banging or clanging, grinding or screeching, it is time to give us a call. Your heater is trying to tell you something, and that something is that it is struggling in some way! Ignoring its cries of duress will come back to haunt you when you finally decide it’s worth calling a technician.

Schedule your furnace repairs with Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning, the company you can trust.

Twitter

Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning Blog

Search

Archive

Archive

Categories

Categories

Tags