When it comes to electricity, a house’s integrated heating and cooling system are usually the ones with the most consumption. While there is no excuse not to use it during cold winter nights and extremely hot summer middays, it’s important to remember that there are still several ways to conserve energy and save a significant amount of money from the utility bill. Below are some helpful tips that will help you achieve a more efficient add-on home cooling system:

Add On Cooling Efficiency Tips

Above all else, make sure that the add on cooling device you will integrate with the home furnace is energy efficient. If you’re hunting in the market for a brand new cooling system, you will have an easier time since newer models are more energy saving than older ones, and they tend to make these their main selling points. Most of the time, these recently released energy-efficient models are more expensive, but in the long run the extra hundred dollars will be offset through the savings earned by much lower energy consumption.

Next, try to limit your use of the add on cooling system. During the non-peak hot hours of the day, instead of turning the system on, you can cool the living spaces by opening the windows and turning on the ceiling fans.
You can avoid heat build-up by carefully organizing home interiors and scheduling activities. During the morning, close the curtains facing the east and during the afternoon those in the west. Also avoid placing tall cabinets and furniture near areas of ventilation. Heat-generating activities like ironing clothes, cooking, and turning-on the lights during the hottest part of the day must be avoided.

Lastly, make sure your that your walls are well insulated to persistently keep the cold air in and the hot air out. If you can afford it, install storm doors on entrances that surround the home. If your home has a fireplace, make sure that the flue is shut.

If you’re a resident of highland regions, you probably already know the importance of using a reliable gas ducted heating system to keep your home warm during very cold winters. But are you aware that upgrading your heating system with an add on cooling device will allow you to use it to cool your home during the summer season?

As a response to today’s frugal and energy efficiency-minded consumers, many Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning companies are now offering services to amalgamate home heating and cooling systems. Through an add on cooling installation service, home owners can forego buying an extra temperature control system and save a substantial amount of money in the process.

Add On Cooling Upgrade

The upgrade is fairly straightforward, and uses a network of ducts, vents and blowers from the existing heating system. In choosing a cooling unit, make sure that you pick among brands that provide the same fully programmable controller. This will enable you to modify and blend a variety of quality factors, from room temperature to humidity, from blower speed to automatic shut off.

When picking an add on cooling unit to integrate with your present ducted  heating system, you must also ensure that the model offers the ability to create zones. Note that between heating and cooling, the latter is more difficult and requires more energy to perform, and hence the unit must enable users to freely direct the zones where the cold air is supposed to circulate.

One of the potential drawbacks of integrated cooling and heating system is the increased chances of delivering contaminated air. To avoid this problem, you must also take into consideration the filtering capacity of the add on cooling unit you will choose. What’s the sense of getting the comfort of conditioned air when your health will be at risk? In connection to this also make sure that the unit has a multi-year warranty so you can have a fallback when things go wrong.

If you are situated in a region where winter seasons are long and harsh, having a heating system is a home priority.  Among the heating systems available in the market, traditional forced-air system employing ductwork is still the best in terms of almost everything, from usability to energy efficiency to costs and to safety. What is more interesting about ducted heating is their flexibility. It is the only heating system which can accommodate add on cooling.

Installation of air cooling unit into an existing ducted heating system is in industrial terms called add on cooling. The upgrade process deals with the installation of a mechanism called an evaporator or coil in the furnace and a condenser outside it. Serving as links between the evaporator and the condenser are wires called refrigerant lines.

Getting Add On Cooling

The procedure of upgrading a heating system by adding a cooling mechanism is obviously more preferable than making a separate ducted cooling system altogether in as much as the former costs a lot less.  When using an add on cooling system, everything is already laid out; a few installation here and there and the work can be finished within a day. However, this convenience also has a drawback, especially when the present heating system is very small. Note that it is easier to warm than cool the temperatures of living spaces, so when the existing ducted heating system is not big enough to accommodate the add on cooling mechanism, the performance will be strongly affected.

The problem can be a big one especially if you have a two-storey home, and when the ductwork heating system is only located in the first story.  The second floor will definitely suffer from lack of conditioned air.  Hence if you are planning to do add on cooling to your heating system and you are in this kind of situation, you need to redesign the ducts in such a way that the air conditioning can effectively reach the upper level.