Heating And AC Repair: Causes Of High HVAC Energy Bills And How To Prevent Them In Homes | Richardson, TX
Homes can sometimes be unbearably hot or cold during the summer and winter. Most households depend on heating and cooling units for comfortable temperatures in such seasons. The HVAC units use electricity or natural gas to operate the coolers or heating systems that cool and heat your space. The U.S Department of Energy points out that at least half the energy usage in a household goes to the running of the HVAC systems.
However, it could account for more because of problematic HVAC devices. Your heaters and coolers may be consuming a lot of energy, increasing your utility bills. In this blog post, let’s look at some of the reasons why you could be experiencing high and persistent HVAC energy bills in your Richardson, TX house.
- Frequently Running HVAC System
The first reason your energy bills could be skyrocketing might be due to your air conditioner or heating system running all the time. When your AC conditioner and the heater continue to operate even after reaching the desirable and comfortable indoor temperatures, they consume more energy, making your energy costs go up.
How To Prevent It
Once the technician you hire for heating and AC repair services confirms that your HVAC units are a factor behind the high bills, they can guide you on how to prevent the high energy costs. The expert can recommend using a programmable thermostat to control the temperatures.
According to Energy Saver, you can save up to 10 percent of your HVAC bills by using programmable thermostats. You can set the thermostat at desirable temperatures to run, say, for eight hours while asleep or when no one is in the house, extending the life of your HVAC system.
With correct installation by qualified heating and AC repair service providers, the programmable thermostats restore the temperatures you were enjoying before you left your home or went to sleep.
- Age Of The Heating And Cooling Units
Another aspect that can skyrocket bills in your home is an old HVAC system. When your furnace, boilers, and air conditioners are old, they tend to wear out, and this affects their overall performance in controlling humidity in the various rooms of your home. With multiple damaged or failing parts, the HVAC units use a lot of energy to efficiently cool or warm your house.
The system might have undergone numerous heating and AC repair services over the years and now is at the point you can’t salvage it anymore.
What To Do
The only way an old HVAC unit can serve your home efficiently is by having routine maintenance during its time of service. The heating and AC service contractors perform intense inspections of the entire system, identifying parts that require immediate repairs and replacements and fixing them immediately.
Therefore, to prevent an old HVAC unit from consuming high energy levels, proper maintenance over the years could do the magic. However, if skipping numerous tune-ups and serving was your norm, be sure to start saving up for another furnace, heat pump, or air conditioner. You can link up with a skilled technician for heating and AC repair and installation services.
- Wrong-Sized HVAC Unit
Your utility bills can also go up drastically because of a wrong-sized HVAC unit. When you get an inexperienced and unqualified folk in Richardson, TX, who knows nothing about the size of the heating and air conditioning units, unpleasant surprises like the installation of a wrong-sized system are inevitable.
A small air conditioner or furnace can drive up your HVAC bills because of running constantly. Oversized air conditioning or heating units require a lot of energy to operate, and this can adversely impact your electric bill.
Prevention Measures
It’s easy for homeowners to buy undersized or oversized air conditioners, ventilators, and heaters. As such, you should consult with a skilled and experienced heating and AC repair and installation service provider who understands the right size of HVAC equipment for your home.
The professional calculates the amount of space the heater or cooling unit will heat or cool, the number of windows and doors and their locations, and the layout of your house to determine the correctly-sized HVAC unit.
A contractor specializing in HVAC repair and replacement can also check the efficiency of the ducts, insulation, and passive solar heat gain in finding the best-suited air conditioner and heater for your home
- Dirty Air Filters
Homeowners can also get the shock of higher energy bills if the air filters in their furnace, ventilation, or central heating systems are dirty or clogged with dirt. Air filters are vital in improving indoor air quality and the efficient operation of components of the air conditioner, boilers, and ventilators.
They help the HVAC systems to provide clean and healthy air that’s free from pollutants. Remember contaminated air can bring about health issues such as allergies and respiratory tract infections.
This is what happens; when the filters become dirty or clogged, air circulation is hindered, and this makes the furnace or air conditioners overwork to provide conditioned warm or cool air. In doing so, they end up consuming more energy.
Obstructed filters may cause mild to severe damage to your HVAC systems. To avoid such inconveniences, you’ll need to find a professional technician for competent and reliable heating and AC repair services.
How to Deal with Dirty Filters
If you have reusable filters for your central air conditioner and your heaters, you should perform routine cleaning to ensure they are always clean.
For the filters that are not reusable, you should get qualified and experienced heating and AC repair service technicians to replace the dirty filters with clean and advanced types. Keeping the filters clean is a way of saving your HVAC equipment from damage and lowering energy consumption by 5 to 15 percent.
Another way to prevent dirty filters in your residence is by clearing obstructions near your HVAC unit. You can remove the trees, plants, bushes, and debris close to your furnace, ventilators, and air conditioners.
Doing this will prevent them from causing havoc to your HVAC system. Removing the obstacles protects your HVAC systems from straining, burnout, overheating, and worst of all, sudden failure.
- Drafty Windows And Doors
You might be wondering what windows and doors in your home have to do with inefficient HVAC systems. But yes, they’re a factor! They contribute a lot to the amount of energy your air conditioners and heaters use.
If your windows and doors are not energy-efficient, they tend to allow the conditioned air from your heaters and coolers to escape to the outside and the outdoor air to get inside your Richardson, TX house.
The escape of the conditioned air makes certain parts of your home cooler or warmer than others, creating an uneven supply of cold air during summer or warm air in the chilly season.
Your HVAC units will have to work harder to ensure the drafts created by the windows or doors are reduced for comfort, consuming more energy that increases the bills. Though heating and AC repair services might not apply here, the HVAC company might recommend sealing the windows to reduce the drafts.
How to Prevent the Drafts
Since draft windows are the culprit, in this case, replacing the windows with energy-efficient windows is the best option. If you cannot afford the windows and the labor costs at that particular time, you can opt for sealing all the parts in your windows and doors that have gaps for better insulation.
The sealing will restore the energy bills to normal and save your HVAC unit from destruction due to the extreme work of cooling and heating your home. It will also shield you from digging deeper into your pockets to pay for costly heating and AC repair services.
- Damaged Ductwork
To add to the list of HVAC issues that increase energy bills in your Richardson, TX home, is leaking ductwork. The ductwork in your home is for moving air from the heating and cooling systems to the rooms in your home for maximum comfort during winter and summer. It may be prone to damage, affecting the optimal performance of the heaters and air conditioning system.
Leaking ductwork makes the HVAC units strain in generating sufficient conditioned air in your space. This means they use more power, and this increases your energy costs. Some of the issues leading to ductwork leaks and require urgent heating and AC repair services are:
- Loose ductwork: it is an issue that arises due to poor installation by a quack HVAC technician. It requires prompt heating and AC repair services to prevent it from pulling away, collapsing, and driving the energy costs higher.
- Cracks and corrosion: the ductwork can also get damaged because of simple wear and tear over time, creating cracks that allow air to leak. The air leakage creates a draft that makes the air conditioning system and the heaters consume a lot of energy to cool and heat your Richardson, TX home.
How to Prevent Ductwork Leaks
One way of preventing duct leaks is having qualified heating and AC repair and maintenance service providers calibrate and inspect the ductwork semi-annually.
The inspections help identify emerging issues and fix them before they worsen. The heating and AC repair technicians can also advise against the closing of vents to prevent back pressure in the ductwork that can lead to air leakage which in turn, leads to high energy bills.
- Lack of Maintenance
Homeowners that skip regular maintenance services for their HVAC systems face recurring preventable issues that eventually destroy the units without prompt heating and AC repair services.
Problems such as air leaks from ductwork, dirty air filters, wrong-sized HVAC systems, and old units with multiple signs of wear and tear can be identified and fixed during servicing and tune-ups of the systems.
Your hired heating and AC repair and maintenance service contractors carefully and skillfully check all the HVAC components, test their functionality, and fix any issue they pinpoint to ensure the efficiency of the unit.
You can avoid skipping routine maintenance of your heaters and air conditioning units by getting a service agreement from a reputable HVAC company in Richardson, TX.
The contract provides for check-ups of your furnace and air conditioners at least twice annually. The tune-ups ensure little or no interference with the smooth operation of the heaters and coolers during the summer or winter. The agreement also helps HVAC experts to detect problems for timely heating and AC repair services to prevent the system’s eventual failure.
- Inefficient Air Conditioners And Furnaces
Air conditioning equipment and heaters that are failing are also to blame for the constant rise in energy bills in your home. Perhaps, your utility bill could be escalating due to clogged air filters and drain lines, dirty compressors, faulty condensing units, and coils, affecting efficiency.
Without seeking heating and AC repair services in time to address any arising problem, you risk having a failed HVAC system to contend with amidst the scorching hot summers or mid-winters.
How to Prevent Inefficiency
You can opt for energy-efficient central air conditioners, furnaces, and heat pumps for the best comfort with low energy use. You should call a reputable heating and AC repair and installation company for proper installation to achieve optimal efficiency.
Keep Your HVAC Bills Low!
HVAC units are vital in providing healthy indoor air quality and appropriate temperatures based on the weather to increase comfort in your Richardson, TX home.
If your utility bills are constantly going up and you think your heating or cooling units could be the reason why call One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating of Dallas. We are a licensed HVAC company serving customers in Dallas and the surrounding areas since 1988.
Our technicians are trained and keep up-to-date with the latest technological advancements in the HVAC industry to provide quality and competent services. We are ready to address numerous issues and will be there for you when you need urgent heating and AC repair services.