DB Heating & Cooling, Inc. Blog : Archive for September, 2014

Can I Do Heating Maintenance on My Own?

Monday, September 29th, 2014

DIY is very popular, and there are some tasks that homeowners can handle on their own. However, any kind of work on your heating system does not fall into this category. Unless you have expert knowledge about it, it is not advisable to take on heating repair or maintenance yourself. Instead, call an expert for your heating maintenance in Bergen County: DB Heating & Cooling.

What Happens During A Maintenance Appointment?

Understanding what happens during a professional maintenance appointment demonstrates how in-depth an appointment really is:

  • Thorough inspection of entire system
  • Check all electrical components, including wires
  • Check all motors
  • Check entire burner assembly
  • Clean all components as needed, including removing ash and soot
  • Safety checks, including for carbon monoxide
  • Change air filter
  • Check all belts for wear and tightness
  • Check for leaks and cracks in components
  • Clean and lubricate parts as needed
  • Make small repairs as needed
  • Flush the system

It’s quite a comprehensive list and entails a lot of work – are you up to it? Do you have the tools to accomplish all these tasks, and can you do them efficiently and quickly? These are all questions you have to ask yourself before committing to conducting your own maintenance.

Benefits of Maintenance

When maintenance is performed correctly, these are the benefits you can expect:

  • Better energy efficiency – when your system is being weighed down by dirt, dust and wear-and-tear, it can’t perform to the energy efficiency level it was made to. Performing maintenance allows your system to run optimally, which can help it maintain energy efficiency.
  • Better comfort – a system that is struggling to perform may not be able to achieve the set temperature. Maintenance helps put everything in good working order so that your heating system can heat as it should.
  • Prevents repairs – the thorough inspection your system undergoes during a maintenance appointment allows the technician to detect any existing or developing problems, and repair them before they can become large and potentially costly.

The bottom line: unless you have the expert knowledge of a trained professional, you shouldn’t take the risk of performing your own maintenance.

When your heating system needs expert attention call DB Heating & Cooling and schedule your heating maintenance in Bergen County today.

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The Steps of Professional Furnace Maintenance

Monday, September 22nd, 2014

Maintaining your heating system is important for its energy efficiency, longevity and providing the heating you need through the winter. There are multiple tasks involved with a professional furnace maintenance appointment in Bergen County, and we’ll outline some of them here. To truly benefit from maintenance, it’s important to always hire trained professionals. Let the specialists at DB Heating & Cooling get your furnace in great shape for this winter – schedule a maintenance appointment today.

What Happens During a Routine Maintenance Appointment?

DB Heating & Cooling tailors every maintenance appointment to fit our clients’ homes and heating systems. But there are some basic tasks that are always performed, as outlined below:

  • Safety check (to check for leaking fumes) You say that these are always performed, but it seems like many of these are specific to gas furnaces, not applicable to electric furnaces
  • Cleaning/replacing of air filter
  • Check and test combustion chamber/heat exchanger
  • Clean burner compartment/firebox
  • Check pilot safety timing or flame sensor
  • Inspect burner flame to ensure proper mix of air and fuel
  • Ensure that the chimney vents properly
  • Check all motors and belts
  • Lubricate all moving parts

Why Conduct Heating Maintenance?

The benefits of maintenance can carry you through the whole winter:

  • Better energy efficiency – when your furnace is dirty and worn it can’t run as well as it should. During maintenance, it will be cleaned, lubricated and adjusted, so that all the components and your system work optimally.
  • Longevity – an ill-maintained heating system is one that will age prematurely due to operating under stress. When your system is kept in good working order, it operates normally, which helps it extend it lifespan.
  • Prevents repairs – the EPA estimates that a heating system that is well-maintained can reduce its incidence of repair up to 30%. This is because your system runs optimally, and also because your technician will be able to detect any existing or developing problems, and repair them as needed.

Fall offers a great time frame to schedule maintenance for your furnace in Bergen County.

If you haven’t had your heating system professionally maintained in more than 12 months, call DB Heating & Cooling today and schedule an appointment with one of our experts.

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Benefits of Maintaining Commercial Packaged Air Conditioning Units in the Fall

Monday, September 15th, 2014

While you can schedule maintenance for any time of the year, spring and fall are ideal. There are two reasons for this: first, as the weather cools, it isn’t as difficult to go without cooling for a couple of hours while your maintenance appointment is conducted, and second, technician availability is increased because it is no longer peak cooling season. There are multiple benefits to scheduling maintenance for your commercial packaged air conditioning unit in Westwood, as we’ll outline below. As with any air commercial AC service, it’s important to hire professionals who are trained to work on commercial air conditioners; DB Heating & Cooling has the certified and trained technicians you need for any commercial AC job.

Benefits of Performing Fall Maintenance

There are several important benefits to performing fall maintenance on your commercial air conditioner:

  • Better energy efficiency – for every year that an air conditioner isn’t maintained, it can lose up to 5% of its overall efficiency. Conversely, an AC that is well-maintained will retain 95% of its original efficiency, and better energy efficiency can result in lower energy bills.
  • Prevent repairs – during a routine maintenance appointment, your system is thoroughly inspected, allowing for existing and developing problems to be detected. In addition, the components and parts in your system are lubricated, cleaned and adjusted as needed, which helps prevent small problems from becoming bigger ones.
  • Extend the life of your system – when your air conditioner operates for a long period of time under stressful conditions – it’s dirty, certain parts are worn, etc. – the system can prematurely age. Maintenance keeps your air conditioner in good working order so that it operates optimally; this can extend the life of your system.

Customized Maintenance

At DB Heating & Cooling, we customize every maintenance plan according to the type of system you have; this allows us to provide the best service possible. At a minimum, maintenance should be scheduled for your commercial packaged air conditioning unit in Westwood once a year; ideally, scheduling occurs twice a year.

Fall offers a great opportunity to schedule a maintenance appointment, so call us today and schedule maintenance with one of our certified technicians.

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Finding an Energy Efficient System for Air Conditioning Replacement

Monday, September 8th, 2014

Your air conditioner has served you well over the years, but it’s nearly the end of the summer, and you want a new system for the next cooling season that will keep your home cool for years to come. Air conditioning replacement is a great step to take towards saving some money every month on cooling costs. While your older air conditioner may have been energy efficient when it was purchased, you probably noticed higher energy bills around the end of your time with it.

This is because, over time, the parts of an air conditioner begin to wear out, meaning your system must work harder to get your home to the desired temperature. Since your system must run for longer periods of time, your bills go up, and you may compensate by running the AC for shorter periods of time or setting a higher temperature. But for your new air conditioner, you want a system that is energy efficient and also won’t fall short when it comes to performance.

You’re in luck! The U.S. government mandates that all air conditioners sold in the U.S. must come with an EnergyGuide label giving pertinent information about the energy efficiency of a unit. The first number you’ll find on this label is the SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio). The SEER is a number that indicates efficiency, and it is measured by calculating the amount of energy a system uses to cool a given space in a typical cooling season. A higher SEER indicates greater efficiency.

You should also look for the ENERGY STAR symbol when choosing air conditioning replacement. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency only awards ENERGY STAR to systems that meet high standards of performance and emit fewer pollutants than other air conditioners. While an AC only needs to have a SEER of 13 or higher to be sold in the U.S., ENERGY STAR systems must have a SEER of 14 or higher.

Purchasing an energy-efficient system is not enough to ensure the unit continues to save you money. An air conditioner must be the proper size in order to run efficiently.

You should call a technician once per year for professional AC maintenance. To find the right choice for your air conditioning replacement in Oradell, call DB Heating & Cooling today!

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The Fashion of Wearing White and Labor Day

Monday, September 1st, 2014

You may have heard about the fashion faux pas of wearing white after Labor Day. In the present, this tradition is usually treated as old fashioned and a joke. Few people will criticize you for wearing white articles of clothing after the first Monday in September, or even take notice of it except to wonder why it was ever a major concern at all.

Where did this tradition of white clothing going out of fashion after Labor Day come from, and why did it fade away like colorful fabric washed in a hot load in the washing machine?

In general, white makes sense for the heat of summer. Light-colored clothing reflects away the radiant heat of the sun, instead of absorbing it the way dark colors do, so for thousands of years of human history people have preferred to wear white clothing during the hotter months.

However, the idea of white as strictly fashionable during the summer season only emerged in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—the time when the very concept of “fashion” began to spread across the Western Hemisphere.

It was only the highest level of post-Civil War society in the U.S. that strict and often bizarre rules for fashion controlled whether someone was in with the “in” crowd. Compared to our ideas of what’s fashionable today, the Czars of Style in the 1880s were true despots. Things as trivial as sleeve length could determine whether a woman in high society—no matter her level of wealth—was fashionable or a pariah.

Wearing white during the only summer, when it was common for weddings and outdoor parties, was only of these restrictive society rules. When the U.S. government made Labor Day a federal holiday in 1894, the Fashion Czars gained a definite cut-off point for when wearing white was no longer “acceptable” in the upper echelons of wealthy society.

For many decades, this rule only applied to a small number of millionaire socialites in a few big cities, but in the 1950s it reached general fashion magazines that were read around the country and started to affect more people.

But time eventually broke apart this odd rule, and during the 1970s fashion became more individual. Some fashion legends, like Coco Chanel, also purposely rejected the restriction and wore white throughout the year. Today, the “no white after Labor Day rule” is little more than an amusing gag to tease friends, and almost nobody takes it seriously.

Whatever you choose to wear after Labor Day (and if it’s white, we won’t tease!), everyone here at DB Heating & Cooling hopes you have a happy end of the summer and great plans for the fall!

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