Air Conditioning Repair: How to Keep Your Air Conditioner Running Efficiently | Mansfield, TX
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As anyone who’s experienced a Texas summer knows, there’s nothing worse than sitting in the home with an air conditioner that’s not working properly. Of course, getting a professional to perform proper air conditioning repair is easy to do, but it’s much easier on you and your home if you never have to worry about fixing the air conditioner in the first place.
Luckily, you have plenty of options to keep your home as cool as it should be. By following a few basic maintenance tips, you can make sure that you keep your air conditioner running for years to come — and make sure that you only need to call for air conditioning repair in the case of emergencies!
Close Your Curtains and Blinds
One of the easiest ways to keep your air conditioner operating at peak efficiency is to keep any extra sunlight from entering your home during the day. Over the course of a day, your HVAC will adjust to the temperature inside your home, and when your home gets extra sunlight, it’s also going to take in the heat that comes with it.
If you’re constantly letting in excess sunlight during the hottest parts of the day, your air conditioner has to work harder to keep your home as cool as you’d like it to be. Over time, that’s going to cause it to wear down faster and necessitate a call for air conditioning repair earlier than you might expect. By doing something as simple as closing the curtains and blinds during the day — especially if you aren’t going to be home — you can keep your home cooler and extend the length of time that you go between needing to call for an air conditioning repair.
Changing Your Air Filter
This should be one of the most basic parts of your HVAC maintenance, but you’d be amazed at how many homeowners forget to make a habit of changing their filter. The general rule is that you need to change your air filter every six months, or a little sooner if you have young children or pets in the home.
That’s because your home’s air quality is actually much dirtier than the outside air, and unfortunately, all of that air has to go somewhere. When things are operating normally, it goes into your air filter, but when you don’t change the filter regularly, that dirt finds its way into your air conditioning system. Over time, the contaminants from the outside air can get into different parts of your HVAC, which can cause them to fail and require you to contact a repair team to come to your Mansfield, TX home.
This is an easy issue to prevent: all you have to do is change your filter regularly and you’ll both extend the life of your HVAC and keep clean air coming into your home. That’s a win-win situation.
Position Lamps Properly
You might be surprised to learn that where you put your lamps can actually have an impact on your air conditioning. But just like the sun, your lamps are a source of heat just as much as they are a source of light, and when you’ve got a lamp near your HVAC, you can trick your system into thinking that it’s hotter than it really is.
When that occurs, your HVAC has to work harder to pump cooler air into your home, and the inevitable conclusion is a burned-out air conditioner and a call for air conditioning repair. Before you plug in a lamp, make sure that it’s nowhere near your HVAC, which should always be as far from light as you can manage.
Increase the Temperature
If you wanted to increase the temperature of your home, you wouldn’t be calling for air conditioning repair, right? While you’re probably not going to want to increase your home’s temperature when you’re at home, there’s nothing stopping you from raising the temperature during the day. When you’re not going to be at home for most of the day, there’s little reason to keep your home as cool as you normally like it, even if you’ve got pets at the house.
If you do have pets, you can usually get away with increasing the temperature by a couple degrees during the day. Most pets will adjust to a slightly higher temperature without issue, so if you take the time to close your blinds and raise the temperature at your home, you’ll see some real savings on your energy output. You can even program your thermostat to decrease the temperature a half-hour before you’re set to come home. This can keep your home as cool as you like and prevent your HVAC from burning out early and forcing you to call for an air conditioning repair specialist.
Clear Away Outdoor Debris
Your air conditioner doesn’t like outdoor debris any more than it likes indoor debris, so anything you can do to clear it away will make a world of difference for the life of your air conditioning unit. When you allow your AC to get blocked by dirt, leaves and other outdoor debris, you’ll find that it doesn’t get the job done as efficiently as it should. When a Texas heat wave arrives and your AC isn’t up to the job, you’re likely to find yourself calling for an air conditioning repair. This one could’ve been easily avoided.
At Minuteman Heating and Air, we’re happy to help homeowners keep their home HVACs as efficient as possible, but we understand that isn’t always possible. When air conditioning repair becomes necessary at your Mansfield, TX home, we’re just a phone call away. Be sure to contact us for a quick fix so that your Texas summer doesn’t turn into a sweltering nightmare!