Air Conditioning Economy Tips

It's time to start cooling our homes so we're going to get your air conditioning system and see how we can make it run more efficiently.

That's so it won't cost you a lot of money. While there are some economy steps you can take with smaller units, like a self evaporating portable air conditioner or a smart window AC, this article will focus on central air conditioning as its main target.

Now if your home or apartment is equipped with the central air conditioner it basically has two parts. There is the outside condensing unit and inside there is a coil inside the furnace.

air conditioning economyWe'll talk about that a little further down the page to make this work the most efficiently.

Clearing Blockages

A good place to start, if you haven't covered the vents and exposed equipment through the winter, chances are some leaves may have blown into the works to block up the airflow. Start by chacking inside the vents and openings to make sure that debris is cleared out to free up the airflow.

We want to have maximum air flow around this unit so it works the most efficiently.

Now we're looking at any bushes that you may have grown around the place to hide the air conditioner's compressor unit if it is installed at ground level. You may not have to look at it but it's a good idea to get any dense shrubbery cut away so we can get some air flow in there.

The maximum airflow will help cool this area the quickest and lower your bills. So regrettably can have too little trimming now once we clear the debris and the shrubbery from around the unit we want to inspect the fins, as this is where the heat dispensation occurs and we make sure they're nice and straight.

Maximum Airflow

We're after getting maximum airflow and that applies to everything from central AC to mini split, window portable and even our clever fully self evaporating portable air conditioner. You can take a regular knife in the kitchen like this and straight them out, or they actually have tools called thin combs that'll do that but check that out so we got again maximum air flow.

It can happen that we get some local critters that are using this as a potty and their fluids can be very acidic. That actually can eat the fins up. I've seen some where whole sides been obliterated by that.

The Condenser

So if you have that problem in your home you might want to put a fence around it. So let's keep a little further away now what happens with these condensing units. They bring condensed some refrigerant it's going to get a super cold.

I'm going to pump that into the house and that's how you get cooling inside the house. It's delivered by these two pipes here that will be hot to the touch.

You want them to be cold to the touch and want to make sure that the insulation is in good shape on these units.

If it's torn here and torn up there that needs to be replaced. You get that from the hardware store the other thing that occurs here is that if you have some vibrations right here with the interior pipes

This is a spot where some holes or leaks might occur so you'll know that when you turn the air conditioner on if it doesn't provide you cooling perhaps you might suspect that there's a leak in the system.

Outside Equipment

This is a good spot to look and of course there's other places to look out here now. Let's go inside and see where these pipes go and what the coil is going to do for you and you can see where the pipes come in from the outside. They end up coming down here into what's called the ″A coil.″

It's called an ″A coil″ because a lot of them are shaped like an ″A″ and there's a coil of copper pipe through there through which the cold refrigerant courses. When the thermoset upstairs says hey we need some cooling up here it tells the fan to come out and tells the outside compressor to come out also in cold refrigerants pouring into here.

We're running that hot warm air from inside over our cold coil and then lowers its temperature. That's how you get air-conditioning delivered to your to your home. But there's something you want to watch out for and this particular half of it here one you can see this installation right here this is what the installation should look like outside.

Blowing Cold Air

These are nice effective we want to make sure that we're not blowing a lot of air just out way from the furnace from the A coil because that's going to be cooling the furnace area and not your home. So you can use this foil tape is really handy or some silicone adhesive.

Just get the fan running around and fuel or the air is coming in if you have an older furnace I'm going to go ahead and check your fan out there and make sure that it doesn't have a lot of dust on the fins and stuff because it'll go slower and then you now raise your cost.

Also one make sure that we have a clean filter in there at the end of winter. It's a really good time to check the filter because it's probably to run in for a while.

Let's see what this one looks like here. Not too awfully bad. A lot of filters are good like this. This is kind of an allergy type filter so if your households got some allergies you can probably use a filter like this.

Clear Out Blockages

Just make sure you change it regularly so it doesn't block air flow. If you can get away with not using a filter like this algae type filter and you've been in a more porous one you'll get more delivery of cold air because you won't be blocking it as much with the filter and then of course make sure your filter is covered with a net foil tape.

It should be pulling in air from the basement here. Now the only thing that occurs we're pulling those warm moist air from inside is that it's going to be condensation coming down. It collects in a pan at the bottom here and this this drain pipe here is used to drain it off down to your floor drain.

If you ever notice that this drain is overflowing so to speak and runners running down underneath the for instantly you've got to get to it and get this clean. We don't need water in the furnace!

It can create rust and other problems that will play you later, so make sure that we've got the drain nice and clear. If you want to check this out and this is what professionals will do to see if you're getting the full BTUs delivered from your system.

Thermostat

You want to put in a probe thermometer right here or up here. If you want to get 55 degrees coming off the top of that coil that's the maximum operating efficiency of this unit. If you're not getting that if I were to get your house cooled and it may mean that you're low on freon coolant or something like that.

Also if you're low on coolant what can occur is that you can actually create a block ice in here because you've got to have a fan flows over the airflow is low and refrigerant level is low then these things don't get quite the right temperature and actually can ice up with the humidity in the house.

If that occurs you're not getting to any air out of your supply that's upstairs and when you turn the air conditioner off and come back downstairs about an hour later you're going to see pools of water underneath there because this thing I'll have to you know fall out to get your air flow back.

So that's basically how you get this to work more efficiently now I'm going to take you up and show you the boss of the system now. The command center, I was referring to of course is the thermostat and the ideal situation is going to set the thermostat around 78 to 80.

That might seem a little warm for you, but will be a little bit cooler will then tell you this it's going to cost you a 5% per degree that you lower it or you're going to save 5% per grade. You can raise your thermostat in the summer time.

Dehumidify

It takes an air conditioner half the energy it uses just to dehumidify the air before it can deliver cooling to the room. So to keep the room at one temperature that is nice and cool, the idea is to keep the doors and windows closed where possible to keep the humidity outside.

If you have a really cool area downstairs you may find that it's a little moist and maybe damp down there. Perhaps you can't run the air conditioner in that area or it's not effective enough. You may need a dehumidifier that would help dehumidify that area.

Most thermostats have a fan setting that says fan on and you just turn the fan on and if you have some returns downstairs.

You can pull that air to move through the rest of the house and save yourself some money that way too and these are some of the basic tips for how you can make your air conditioner run more effectively and efficiently to save money on your electricity costs.


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