With the arrival of fall this week, the time to use your home’s air conditioning system is coming to a close.
But you shouldn’t just flip your thermostat from “cool” to “fan” or “heat.” There are things you need to do to make sure the A/C is ready to go when warm weather returns next year.
This summer has been a hot one here in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. As we’re heading into early fall, we may still need to use our A/C, but we should get out of the habit of running it all day and all night. Do these two things to give the A/C a break and lower your energy costs.
Turn up the thermostat setting. Program your thermostat to 78˚ instead of 74˚. The air conditioning won’t cycle on as frequently, but you won’t notice much of a difference in comfort.
Use your ceiling fans. Circulating the air may be enough to keep you cool without having to turn on the air conditioning.
Between grass clippings from mowing the lawn, branches and twigs blown around during storms, and plants and weeds growing, there may be obstructions on or around the air conditioning unit that impede air flow, create unnecessary wear and tear, and can damage the unit. Take a few minutes to clean anything off the unit and make sure that there is at least a foot of clearance around all sides of the A/C unit.
Your home’s air conditioning system needs an annual tune-up to keep it running at peak efficiency. After the hard work it did this summer, it’s a perfect time for our service technicians to not only give it its tune-up, but carefully inspect it and spot problems before they become big ones. We can also let you know if your A/C is reaching the end of its life so you can begin planning to replace it.
You’ll be ahead of the game next year because you won’t have to try and get the A/C serviced when everyone else is, too!
If you put a fresh filter in before summer started and haven’t changed it since, you really need to do this now. Air filters should not be used longer than three months. And they need to be changed more frequently if you have pets or if someone in your home has allergies or a respiratory condition like asthma or COPD.
Now is the time to get your home’s air conditioning a tune-up. Schedule service today!
