Certified Air Systems, Inc. Blog : Archive for February, 2015

Times When You Will Benefit from Duct Replacement

Wednesday, February 25th, 2015

You may or may not have heard of duct cleaning, and why it is necessary for keeping your indoor air clean and yourself healthy. There are millions of microscopic particles floating around the average home’s indoor air, causing allergy attacks and illnesses. All of those particles tend to circulate through, and collect in, your home’s ducts. As a result, it’s a good idea to have your ducts cleaned every couple of years to remove all of those contaminants from your house. However, there are some cases where simple duct cleaning just won’t cut it. Here are some times when you could really benefit from duct replacement.

Poorly Installed Ducts

You’d be astonished to learn how many ducts are just poorly installed, many of them by professional HVAC technicians. Poorly installed ducts are not things that can be fixed by simple duct cleaning or sealing. They are often misaligned with other parts of the system, creating gaps that allow air out and contaminants in. Depending on how badly installed your ducts are, it may be easier to replace them than to try and repair them.

Mold Infestation

If leaks develop in a duct system, they can allow moisture to enter and promote mold growth. If you have sheet metal ducts, your HVAC technician may still be able to remove the mold growth and seal the leak. If you have cloth or fiber board ducts, however, an advanced mold infestation is pretty much impossible to remove. At that point, your only real option is to replace the sections that the mold has spread to.

Entrenched Dirt

All ducts can be cleaned, regardless of type. The method used to clean them simply varies. However, some kinds of ducts can have dirt become entrenched in them over many years. It can eventually get to the point where no amount of cleaning will completely remove that dirt from the duct. Sheet metal ducts do not have this problem, but if you have any other kind of ductwork you might be susceptible to it.

If you aren’t sure about the condition of your ducts, call Certified Air Systems, Inc. We provide professional duct replacement in the Orlando, FL area.

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Common Ductless Heating Issues

Monday, February 16th, 2015

Ductless heating and cooling systems contain some of the same components as air conditioning systems. A ductless unit uses refrigerant to absorb heat from your home and move it outside in the cooling season or to move heat into your house in the heating season. What makes these systems unique, of course, is that you don’t need any ductwork in order to install one. This means that they may be less likely to need repairs, in some respects, since leaky ducts are responsible for a lot of heating and cooling issues. But a ductless heating system can still encounter a few of the same issues as a ducted unit, most of which require immediate repair.

  • Low Refrigerant – Refrigerant continuously cycles throughout the ductless system as it is running. In the heating season, the refrigerant absorbs heat from the air outside as it evaporates and then moves this heat into your home. When there’s not enough refrigerant, the system cannot efficiently heat a room, which means that you end up spending more money on electricity. Besides that, other components can begin to suffer, including the compressor.
  • Dirty Coil – Dirt in the ductless unit can be just as problematic as a broken part. A dirty inside or outside coil will have trouble absorbing or releasing heat. This means that other parts will have to work harder to compensate, which may result in worn-down and struggling components.
  • Blower Fan Trouble – The blower fan in the inside unit of your ductless heating system is responsible for drawing in the air in your home in order to heat or cool it. Debris can get into the blower fan and impede function, resulting in limited heating and cooling, and potentially, a frozen indoor coil.
  • Compressor Damage – The compressor is one of the most important components of a ductless air conditioning and heating system, and one of the most costly. Unfortunately, when this part fails, you may need to replace the outdoor unit, which is why regular maintenance is so important.
  • Faulty Installation with the Indoor Unit – Another common repair need has to do with the aesthetics of the unit. The indoor fan portion of your AC is mounted high on the wall or suspended from the ceiling, but it may peel off over time if it is not mounted properly.

Call Certified Air Systems, Inc. to talk with certified professionals about our ductless heating service in Casselberry today.

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Some of the Unusual Movies Released for Valentine’s Day

Saturday, February 14th, 2015

Hollywood has always tried to match movies up to the seasons to draw droves of viewers to the theaters: October is packed with fright-offerings, while the winter holidays skew toward warm and pleasing family films (as well as Oscar hopefuls). Valentine’s Day falls in an odd spot when it comes to the movie release calendar, however, since February tends to be a slower time for the film industry. The studios are as likely to slot strange movies that don’t fit anywhere else in their annual schedules into the Valentine’s Day weekend as they are films with powerful romantic appeal.

So, while the second weekend of February has featured hugely successful romantic comedies like Hitch, The Wedding Singer, and (of course) Valentine’s Day, some truly weird choices have debuted in this weekend as well. And a few have even gone on to tremendous success despite the bizarre match with the holiday. Here are a couple of the odder Valentine’s Day movie releases:

  • Dracula (1931): Yes, this Halloween perennial and the start of Universal Studio’s Classic Monsters actually came out on Valentine’s Day! But perhaps this makes some sense, as the Dracula legend has often received a “doomed lover” approach in the many years since Bela Lugosi made the aristocratic vampire a screen icon.
  • The Silence of the Lambs (1991): Does any film seem less appropriate for Valentine’s Day than this unnerving and sometimes very violent psychological thriller? What’s even more astonishing than the film’s release date is that The Silence of the Lambs eventually nabbed the Oscar for Best Picture, an almost unheard of occurrence for a movie released so early in the year.
  • Daredevil (2003): This Marvel comic adaptation featuring Ben Affleck as a blind superhero does contain a romantic subplot, but the stronger connection to Valentine’s Day may just be that Daredevil wears a bright red costume.
  • A Good Day to Die Hard (2013): The least successful of the Die Hard film franchise, this is an excellent example of a studio dropping a film into a weekend where it doesn’t fit in the hopes that it works as counter-programming. (It didn’t.)
  • Wayne’s World (1992): Now here is an example of counter-programming that clicked with audiences. This comedy based on a Saturday Night Live sketch turned into one of that year’s biggest hits and spawned a sequel.

Whether you celebrate Valentine’s Day with a trip to the movie theater, or you have your own special plans, everyone here at Certified Air Systems hopes you and your loved ones have a wonderful weekend.

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How Does a Heat Pump Work?

Thursday, February 5th, 2015

It’s not hard to see why heat pumps are becoming so popular among homeowners. They’re energy efficient, safe, and can both heat and cool a home. Plenty of people are eager to reap the benefits of heat pumps, but not many of them know how a heat pump actually works. The more you know about a system, the better you’ll be able to gauge whether or not it fits your needs. With that in mind, let’s examine how a heat pump works.

Heat Pump Construction and Operation

A heat pump has two main parts, the indoor and outdoor units. As you might expect, the indoor unit is installed inside the house, while the outdoor unit is installed outside. The two units are connected by power and refrigerant lines, which are vital to the operation of the system. Inside each unit is a coil, which is connected to the refrigerant line that runs between the two units.

When the heat pump is turned on, the outside unit begins to evaporate refrigerant inside its coil. As the refrigerant evaporates into gas, it draws heat from the air surrounding the unit. The gas then travels down the refrigerant line, taking the heat with it. When it reaches the indoor unit, the refrigerant is condensed back into a liquid and the heat is released to warm the home. This cycle continues as long as the heat is on, with the refrigerant constantly being converted from liquid to gas and back again.

Advantages of a Heat Pump

Heat pumps have many advantages over more traditional heating systems, the first of which being their energy efficiency. Heat pumps do not burn fuel in order to create heat, instead moving existing heat from one place to another. This is a much less wasteful process than the methods combustion systems use, and saves quite a bit of money over time.

Heat pumps are also safer than most traditional heating system. Any time fuel is being combusted, there are leftover waste materials that are often vented out of the house. In the case of natural gas, these byproducts include toxic gases like carbon monoxide. While systems that produce such pollutants are designed to safely dispose of them, there is always a risk of a malfunction exposing members of the house to them. Heat pumps have no such thing to worry about.

If you’d like to know more about heat pumps and their benefits, call Certified Air Systems, Inc. We provide professional heat pump service in the Oviedo area.

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