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WHOLE HOUSE MEDIA FILTER
All forced air Heating & Cooling Systems require some sort of filtering system. Most homes are only equipped with the basic one inch filtering systems that in some cases are provided with the equipment. For equipment that does not provide a filter, most HVAC contractors will install a simple one inch filter rack because of expense.
As some filter is better then no filter, a standard one inch filter is acceptable. But, have you ever really looked at one of the simple, standard fiberglass filters. How in the heck can those things ever really filter anything? Hold one up and you can probably read a newspaper through it. The primary reason that filters are recommended by HVAC equipment manufacturers is for the protection of the equipment. Many service calls are a result of a clogged dirty filter. It seems hard to believe, but a simple clogged filter can cause a restriction of the air needed for your heating & cooling system to operate properly. In heating, a restriction may make your furnace “limit out” and this will cause the safety features of your furnace to work, causing your system to shut down. In cooling, a dirty filter is one of the most common causes of your system to “freeze up”. Both of these problems normally result in a service call by a professional HVAC technician and that costs money!
Beyond the need to filter your home comfort system’s air to protect the equipment, is the real and best reason of all. YOU’RE HEALTH! The ultimate impact of any air cleaning device should be to provide health benefits to the individuals who use them by reducing exposure to pollutants in the indoor air and reducing symptoms, especially those associated with asthma, rhinitis, and allergic respiratory disease. Think about it. The air that is running through your home comfort system is re-circulated air for the most part. If someone sprays an aerosol can, the pollutants from that travel into and back out of your heating and cooling system. If someone has a virus and sneezes into the air of your home, that air also gets caught in the loop of circulated air. So, wouldn’t you want the filter on your system to capture as much of those pollutants as possible. Of course you would!
Installing a Whole House Media Filter on your system is one of the easiest do-it-yourself projects and the benefits so outweigh the initial expense, which is really not that much in the first place. Media filter type systems are housed in heavy duty cases that install between your air handling unit and the return air of your duct system. These media are usually 100% electrostatically -charged synthetic material. Non-woven, 5-inch thick, pleated Air Bear media filter traps particles as small as one micron.
Because the media type filters are so much larger in surface area, the need to change these filters is reduced to only a few times each year as opposed to the standard one inch filters that should be changed monthly. Unless you have a herd of livestock living in your home and you fry catfish every night, the media type filters need only be replaced seasonally. Replacing media filters is simple. Just remove the front of the housing, slide the old filter out and the new filter in and “TA-DA”, you are done.
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UV Lights
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Micro-organisms that travel through your indoor air can get trapped in the moist environment of your air conditioning system. Bacteria can then breed and spread throughout your home.
At present, germicidal ultraviolet light (UV), when properly integrated into a heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) system, is an effective method for preventing indoor air contamination from spreading throughout your home
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Humidifiers
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By-Pass Flow Through Humidifier 19.2 Gallon Per Day
By-Pass Flow Through Humidifier 23 Gallon Per Day
Are there any other BENEFITS to properly conditioned air?
Yes, it can help you save energy! Warm, humid summer air feels hotter than it actually is because of the moisture it contains. That same principle applies to your home in the winter. By keeping the relative humidity inside your home at an ideal level, you can turn your thermostat down a few degrees and still feel comfortable. Dialing down your thermostat just three degrees can reduce your heating bill by as much as 5%. |
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INDOOR AIR QUALITY AND THE AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION
As consumers, we are constantly being bombarded with advertisements to buy products and often the motivation is that the company producing the products needs to sell them. Once in a while, the need to look into purchasing a product goes beyond the capitalist aspect and hits at the heart, and in this case, lungs. Filtering the air that we breathe is of the utmost importance. As clean as we think we are, we create pollutants, and often our homes are encasements of these pollutants.
But, in keeping with our spirit to overcome, products are available to minimize this problem. High Efficiency Air Filtering and Ultra-Violet Light systems are readily available and reasonably simple to install. As you shop for your new Heating & Air Conditioning System, do not forget to protect yourself by doing all that you can to filter the air that you breathe.
Below is an excerpt from an American Lung Association publication:
Facts about Indoor Air Quality
• According to the American Lung Association, elements within our home and workplaces have been increasingly recognized as threats to our respiratory health. The most common pollutants are radon, combustion products, biologicals (molds, pet dander, and pollen), volatile organic compounds, lead dust and asbestos.
• The Environmental Protection Agency lists poor indoor air quality as the fourth largest environmental threat to our country.
• There are an estimated 42.6 million Americans living with hay fever and/or asthma. Learning how to control a home’s environment to reduce allergen levels is important for managing allergies and asthma. Individuals who suffer from asthma, or have other respiratory illness may potentially be at a greater risk for health complications associated with poor air quality in their homes.
• Asthma is a serious chronic respiratory disease that affects people of all ages. The number of people nationwide with asthma has risen during the past two decades.
• In the house, poor indoor air quality can result in structural rot within the walls and attic and around window framing from excess moisture.
• Common pollutants can enter our houses through air leaks in the structure.
• Common housing problems or failures that occur in our homes include: musty odors and mold growth, window condensation, structural rot, peeling paint, back drafting appliances, damp basements and ice dams, or build-up of ice on the roof’s edge, and high utility costs.
Saving money by upgrading to higher efficiency heating and cooling equipment is a great way to protect your financial health as well as the health of our environment by reducing the amount of energy utilized.
Installing high efficiency home air filtering and indoor air quality devices also helps protect your financial health by possibly reducing the amount of medical treatments needed from environmentally induced pollutants and is a big step in improving your overall health.
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Enjoy Every Degree of Comfort With Whirlpool
Whirlpool Brand and or it’s family of products have been a part of our lives for over 90 years. When choosing a new home comfort system, you can be assured that Whirlpool is at the top of the class.
Whirlpool Brand Heating & Cooling Systems are designed and built with environmental and economic features and benefits that give you peace of mind as well as total comfort. It has been an ongoing dedication to provide homeowners great quality products that help make their lives better and more comfortable for nearly a century.
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UV LIGHTS aka “Ultraviolet Air Cleaners “
We know that ultraviolet rays are harmful to our skin if we are over exposed to the suns rays. This is the reason most of us use sun block in the summer. Why are UV rays so harmful to us and most biological organisms? UV rays penetrate the cells and break down the molecular bonds in the cells. This can cause mutation of the cells and change their biological make-up.
This process can be used to our advantage to improve the indoor air quality of our homes. UV lights can easily be installed in your duct work so that it may wash the air from harmful bio-organisms that live in the air and duct . When the air containing these microorganisms pass through the UV light in the duct work, the light penetrates the organism and breaks down its molecular bonds. This causes cellular and genetic damage that renders these microscopic critters harmless. It also robs them of their ability to reproduce. Many of the harmful particulates that make you sick can be eradicated from your system if you have one of these lights installed in your duct work.
There is an additional benefit to having UV light protection installed in your ducts. In a recent issue of an engineering trade journal, it was reported that significant benefits were observed in an office complex, after the installation of UV Lights in the air systems. In this article a contractor installed UV lights in the ducts of a very large building. In addition to the people occupying the building reporting less illness, the power bill for the building was reduced because the UV light eradicated mold, mildew, and other organisms that tend to grow. These things grow on the coils and reduce and restrict air flow. This causes the motors to work harder to push and pull the air where it is supposed to go. The UV light eliminated these restrictions allowing the motors to use less power to move the air. The secondary benefit to this is reduced maintenance costs because the motors are not working so hard all the time and therefore do not have to be replaced or repaired as often. A UV light installed in your duct work can benefit more than your health, it can benefit your checkbook also.
How Programmable Thermostats Works
You have four settings on the typical off the shelf programmable thermostat. One of the easiest thermostats to program that is available to the general public is the Honeywell VisionPro 8000 Programmable Thermostat.
The following list is an example of a programming sequence and assumes the season is winter.
* Wake - this is the setting you want the temperature to be at when you wake. If you wake at 6 a.m. you probably want to set the wake time and temperature for 5:30 a.m. and whatever the desired temperature is for you.
* Leave - this is the time the last person leaves the home for the day. If that person usually leaves at 8 a.m. then the thermostat can be set to change the temperature to say 60 degrees Fahrenheit at 7:30 a.m.
* Return - this is the time that the first person arrives home for the day. If that person arrives home at 4 p.m. then the time and temperature can be set for say 70 degrees Fahrenheit at 3:30 p.m. That way when the person arrives home, the home is at the desired temperature.
* Sleep - this is the time when everyone goes to bed for the night. If everyone is in bed by 10:00 p.m. then the thermostat can be set to change the temperature to a lower setting (say 60 degrees Fahrenheit) for the night.
There are Programmable thermostats that are 5-2 day programmable and thermostats that are 7 day programmable. Either should allow you to tailor each day to suit your needs and schedule. Most programmable thermostats have settings for both the weekdays and weekends so on Saturday and Sunday you can tailor the programmable settings according to your comfort level and lifestyle for those days. All programmable thermostats have options to over-ride the program for manual settings and an additional benefit to owning a programmable thermostat is that most are equipped with a compressor delay to protect your compressor from short cycling.
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