Air conditioners consume energy to provide cooling power for your home, which is what you pay for when those bills arrive every month. With summer on the way, those bills are going to go up almost by default, since you’ll be running your air conditioner more often to compensate for our high Texas heat. Just because you need to pay more, however, doesn’t mean you should pay more than is necessary. By taking steps now, you can improve your air conditioner’s efficiency, allowing it to use the energy you pay for better and lowering your monthly bills in the process. Here are 3 specific ways to accomplish that.
1. Schedule Maintenance
A maintenance session should be scheduled at least once a year, in the spring before you need your air conditioner on a daily basis. It allows the technician to address countless little issues that don’t merit a repair call on their own, but which can add up to create quite a problem. Maintenance gives the technician a chance to treat them before they end up costing you, as well as look for signs of any larger problems that may come along to bite you in the next few months. That allows you to schedule repairs at leisure, and usually reduces the cost of the job since the damage will have less of a chance to spread.
More importantly, it improves the overall efficiency of your air conditioning system, which is one of the reasons why you should schedule it in the spring. That way, your system will perform at its very best over the summer, and shave precious dollars off of your summer cooling bills.
2. Install a Zone Control System
If you have a larger home or one that you struggle to keep cool during the heat of the summer, you might think about installing a zone control system in your ducts. It divides your home into different sections, each of which can be heated or cooled independently of each other. That means you can set different temperatures in different sections of the house, and by extension, shut off the air in parts of the home you aren’t using while still running the air in parts that you are. That cuts down on your monthly bills a great deal, and over time can reduce wear and tear on your system to boot.
3. Look into Dehumidifiers
Here in Texas, high humidity levels can be almost as much of a problem as high temperatures, and that has an impact on your air conditioner as well. When the air becomes too humid, the ambient moisture prevents the sweat from evaporating off of your skin. That constitutes our bodies’ primary means of keeping cool, which means the air feels hotter and clammier when the humidity levels are high. Air conditioners are thus forced to work harder to do their jobs. A whole-house dehumidifier can ease some of the burden, as well as getting that gross muggy feeling out of your home.
If any of these air conditioning upgrades sound like a good fit for your Richardson, TX home, call Hutchins Plumbing & Air Conditioning today.
