Fall is the time of year to start preparing your home for the cold weather that will soon arrive. You can’t simply trust that your heater and its ventilation system will do the job they are supposed to without some assistance, both from you and from professionals. Below are a few steps you can take to see that your HVAC system will perform at top level during the coming winter season:
How to Get the Most from Your HVAC System This Coming Winter
October 26th, 2015Is It Time to Have a New Furnace Installed?
October 19th, 2015It’s October, and although we’re still experiencing warmer weather (mixed with rain), the cooling-off period is not far away. Before we know it, winter will arrive and settle in for its regular stay. Now is a good time to consider making any necessary major changes to the heating system that serves your home. You don’t want to try to arrange for the installation of a new furnace during the coldest period of winter, after all!
If you have a furnace in your home that has served for more than 15 or 20 years, it may be time to retire it and have a new furnace installed. The job isn’t as difficult as you imagine, especially when you call on experienced HVAC professionals like the ones at Purl’s Sheet Metal.
Some questions to ask about your current furnace
To help you think about whether your furnace is ready for replacement, ask yourself a few of these questions:
- How old is the furnace? Check when the furnace was installed. Most gas furnaces have a life expectancy between 15 and 20 years, and electric furnaces a bit longer than this. If you have a system that is over 20 years old, then it’s probably time to have it replaced—even if it shows no outward signs of failing or performance issues. It’s better to get ahead of the problem. And with 20 years of service, the furnace has already returned your original investment in it a few times over.
- Have winter energy bills been rising? Take a look over your energy bills for the past few winters and see if there is a pattern of increasing costs. If you cannot account for a noticeable rise because of greater use of the system, then the issue is probably a furnace that is declining. If the furnace has received regular maintenance and still shows this loss of efficiency, then it is too old to continue to work effectively.
- How often does the furnace need repair work? A furnace should need few repairs during its first few years of service (provided it has routine inspections and tune-ups). After that, it might need a repair every few years. When it needs repairs once or twice a year, or if the repair total to keep it running annually exceeds $500, then you are spending too much on fixing it and should instead put the money toward a replacement.
Purl’s Sheet Metal & Air Conditioning offers heating replacement in Fresno, CA and throughout the Central Valley.
Should You Replace Your Old Air Conditioning System Now That Summer Is Over?
October 5th, 2015It’s already October, and here in the Central Valley we are perched between cooling and heating seasons. This is the time of year when you should think about changes you might want to make to your HVAC system.
Why You Need a Licensed Contractor for Air Conditioning and Heating Services
September 28th, 2015If you’re looking for services for your home’s air conditioning, heating, or ventilation system—no matter if it’s for a small repair or a complete new installation job—one of the most important steps you need to take is to hire licensed contractors to handle the work. In fact, this should be your first step. Once you’ve found the right contractor, most of your concerns will be taken care of.
3 Reasons to Consider Tankless Water Heater Installation
September 21st, 2015For many decades, there was only one basic type of water heater available for homes: the storage tank water heater. This is the kind of water heater that is familiar to most people. Although a tank water heaters is still an effective way to provide a household with sufficient hot water for its needs, it is no longer the only option. If you are considering new installation for a water heater, you might want to take a look at getting a tankless water heater.
What Does a Whole-House Fan Actually Do?
September 14th, 2015At Purl’s Sheet Metal & Air Conditioning, we’re always looking for ways to grow and offer new services to benefit our customers. Recently, we started to offer installation of whole-house fans. Although whole-house fans aren’t actually a new invention—they were popular in the 1950s and ‘60s before central AC was common in homes—they’ve made a comeback because they provide an energy-saving way of cooling and providing better ventilation throughout a house.
Hot Dog Dinner at Madera Fair 2015
September 8th, 2015Purl’s Sheet Metal & Air Conditioning along with Randy and Sheryl Berry are hosting the Annual Hot Dog dinner on September 8th from 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm. We will be hosting a dinner for all the 4H and FFA Exhibitors and their families for the Madera District Fair. The 4H and FFA kids arrive a few days before the Fair to work and prepare to show their livestock animals. The hot dog dinner is an annual tradition in Madera that everyone at Purl’s Sheet Metal & Air Conditioning looks forward to attending. We cook over 500 hotdog dinners complete with drinks and all the fixings’. It is a great way for us to get out in the community and support our local hardworking kids and the agricultural community.
Air Conditioning Problems from a Clogged Drain Line
September 7th, 2015We can still expect a few more weeks of warm-to-hot weather in the Central Valley before the fall cooling starts. This means you must keep an eye on your air conditioning system to watch for any late-season repair issues. You shouldn’t shut off your AC for the season if it has a malfunction, since this can lead to larger problems with the system when the warm weather returns.
Is It Time to Schedule Dryer Vent Cleaning
August 31st, 2015We’ve previously written about the reasons dryer vent cleaning is an important job to schedule for your home. Here, near the end of the summer season, we’d like to provide a friendly reminder about taking care of a task that so often slips people’s minds.
Reasons to Install a Whole-House Fan
August 25th, 2015What is a whole-house fan? It is a large fan installed into a home that draws air through open windows and then exhausts it out the attic and roof. A whole-house fan requires professional installation, since it must be appropriately sized in cubic feet per minute of cooling power to match the volume of space in the building.