There is a way to markedly reduce your energy bills while enhancing your home comfort that every homeowner should know about: it’s lowering your home’s heating and cooling load. If you take on a few projects that reduce load, you’ll see a big boost in savings.
When contractors size a home for a new HVAC system, they perform a load calculation. This tells the contractor how much heat your home needs for winter conditions, and how much cooling it needs for summer weather. When homeowners reduce these loads, they begin to see benefits. Namely, you’ll increase energy savings and, when you upgrade to a new HVAC system, you might be able to purchase a smaller unit, which will cost less to buy and to run.
Here’s how homeowners can reduce their heating and cooling load:
The amount of air that can enter or escape your home increases the load (i.e., the amount of conditioned air) that your furnace or A/C must produce. When you seal air leaks and upgrade insulation, these actions produce a tight seal around the home. Then, air can’t gain access and the heat barrier adequately blocks heat from escaping (in winter) and entering (in summer) the home, and you effectively reduce the load your HVAC systems have to carry.
Energy-efficient windows do the same thing. Because they’re part of the home’s outer envelope, if they are not effective at blocking heat gain and loss, the heating and cooling load for HVAC equipment increases. Upgrading windows, or even using a plastic barrier, can reduce the amount of loss that occurs.
Ventilation can also impact load. For instance, an attic with poor ventilation allows hot air to quickly build up in summer, increasing the cooling load that the A/C has to produce. By providing an equal balance of supply and exhaust air, ventilation lowers the cooling load.
Despite Southern Arizona’s short and mild winter season, you can benefit from addressing the heating and cooling load of your home, and gain benefits from these actions year round. So contact the experts at Hansberger Refrigeration & Electrictoday to get started!
Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about savings and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
Hansberger Refrigeration & Electric Co services the Yuma area in Arizona. Visit our website to see our special offers and get started today!
