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James A/C Co.
serving Do-It-Yourselfers since 1990.
Satisfying every customer....one at a time!
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Call toll free 1-866-584-0355 or 1-903-759-2160
309 Patriot Circle, Longview, TX 75604-2240
The utility bill is too high.
It is best to have a really hot day for best analysis of some things, but most of them
can be checked any time. The closet and attic would be better checked on a cool day, for example.
Hot and polluted attic air can get into the return air from walls around the unit, holes
in walls or the platform. Remember that the return "sucking" of
air creates a vacuum in the area near the unit. A door to the closet that
doesn't seal well or that is smaller than the frame opening or is louvered can let
lots of attic air be pulled into the system.
| DO NOT SEAL THE CEILING OF A GAS FURNACE CLOSET.
This is the way the appliance gets oxygen to burn.
It is an opening for COMBUSTION AIR and it is essential that the air around
the furnace breath into and out of the attic. The closet is just an extension of
the attic. So, all the walls and the floor (platform for the heater and coil) around the heater
should be insulated and sealed.
If your gas furnace is in the living area and is not surrounded by a sealed closet, you
need to build one around it like the drawing at the top of this page. YOU HAVE CARBON MONOXIDE
INSIDE YOUR HOME in the winter when it is in use. This is very important. Your life depends on it.
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An attic fan grill is a very prime target area. Does the house have a positive pressure
in it or is it a negative pressure? If you have a negative pressure
(slight vacuum) in the house, then you are infiltrating air from
outside your home. You may have leaks of air in the ducts in
the attic thus loosing air from the inside of your house as it is
exhausting into the attic and into the outside world. This will
cause a negative pressure to occur inside the home.
You must find any return air or supply air leaks and repair them.
Unwanted air in a system or good air being lost is money lost.
I suggest you look carefully at the platform, the walls, door, and
the
inside 3 1/2 inches of the side walls of the furnace closet. With a
really good thermometer, measure the air entering the return air grill (living space air).
Then measure air inside the unit just before it goes into the blower.
If there is an increase, then it has gotten some hot air from somewhere.
Have you added on another room or enclosed a garage that increased the cooling load?
What is the
temperature of your attic on a 100 degree day? It should NOT be
150 degrees. The cooler the better. Has your attic insulation settled
or been squashed or moved? Do you need more insulation?
12 to 20 inches in an attic these days in common. This is one of those areas you can improve easily and it will greatly improve the air conditioning system and your utility bills.
The largest infiltration of heat into a home comes from the ceiling. Adding more insulation is wonderful, but if the ventilation of the attic is not adequate, then the heat coming through the roof will be trapped inside the attic and the heat on the ceiling is increased. Feel of the ceiling with your palms. Look for warm spots and find the cause. Some of the most common areas are around cabinets that have a blank area above that is open to the hot attic air.
Ventilation of the attic is extremely important. Ridge vents are seldom sufficient. I had those and the soffet screens and 150° F in the attic. I added just two induced draft ventilators and the temperature dropped to 127° F and the air conditioner ran less and the temperature stopped creeping up during our 110°+ days.
Have you had vinyl siding installed? You most likely will find that the soffet vents have been covered over with a section that has a bunch of very tiny holes. This is totally inadequate. Replace them and then install some attic ventilators. I like the induced draft type sometimes called Turbo-vents or similar names. I do not like the ones with motors. They are too short lived. The motors are too light weight.
Have you started keeping the grand kids more often or all the time?
They will open doors a hundred times a day. If the front door and
a back door are open at the same time, you would be amazed at
the amount of air conditioned air that will ZOOM out of a house,
especially if you have a gentle breeze.
Humidity is the biggest job the air conditioner will do.
Is there a problem with the humidity in your house? Do you have
water under the house or in a basement? Do you have more
people taking baths and showers? Have you added a pool or sauna?
Do faucets leak and drip? Does the drier vent into the house or
leak around the machine? It will pour gallons of hot moist air into
the house day after day. Have you cleaned the exhaust piping for it
lately? Have you added a bunch of indoor plants that are watered or misted
daily or more often or have standing water reservoirs?
Some things are pretty basic. If you have too much moisture in the home, then
look for some of these occurrences:
- Constantly dripping faucets.
- Any containers in the home that have water standing often or all the time such as sinks and pet bowls and open fish tanks.
- Indoor air-drying of clothing.
- Use of gas cooking. Moisture is a by-product of gas combustion.
- Keeping lids open on commodes thus allowing more evaporation.
- Not running the exhaust fan during baths and showers to remove the moisture.
- This is most important during the summer months and normally is not needed during the winter time. It may even be desirable in some homes to add moisture in the winter.
- Excessive use of things like steamers, plant misters or tea pots.
- Some building slabs may not have a vapor barrier. You may see sweating of slab where visible.
- Overuse of humidifiers.
- Faulty plumbing such as leaks in walls or under cabinets, etc.
- Moisture under frame homes or in basements.
- Leaking indoor clothes driers. This is one of the most major sources.
- Leaking hot water heaters or water piping.
- Excessive plant containers indoors that require watering.
- Saunas and hot tubs.
- Outdoor drainage that holds water against slab or bricks. You may need to inspect your sprinkler system, too.
- Faulty shower piping or faucets and seals leaking into walls, etc.
- Faulty refrigerators or ice machines that leak or drain excess water or moisture.
- Poor ventilation in closets and bathrooms, etc. Add air conditioning supply grills and/or make sure the doors are not so tight as to not allow circulation of air from the room.
- Extensive soaking of clothing, etc. in open water containers. You may wish to move these to the garage or utility areas.
- Wet clothing, wash rags or towels repeatedly left lying out.
- Leaving floors very wet after mopping.
- Rainwater leakage into attic and/or walls.
- Poor refrigeration or faulty conditions of the cooling system that doesn't remove enough moisture from the air during the summer. Have it checked by a technician. Choose a good hot summer day for this inspection.
Check the "breathing" of the residence. I mean the air that infiltrates and
escapes the building with the doors and windows closed. If you were to
see a house filled with smoke and watch the hundreds of holes where
it is escaping, you would be surprised.
- Attic fans are "breather" number one. If you don't have a well insulated positive seal
as a cover for it when it is not in use, then it is leaking a lot of money in
and out of the indoor air. If you have one and don't intend to use it any
more, remove it and seal over the opening and insulate above it well.
- From your hardware store or lumber yard you can easily obtain little
sealing pads for the electrical receptacles. Remove the center screw of the
receptacle and place the pad around the opening and then reinstall the cover and
screw. Place one of the two-pronged plastic plugs (like the ones you use to prevent children
from sticking things into the holes) into all the unused receptacle
openings. Do this to all the electrical openings in your house. Don't forget the telephone
receptacles.
- Make sure your damper on the fireplace is closed. The purpose of a chimney
is to form a draft for the fire. It will draft money from your house all the time if it is open
and not in use. A very good door should be installed in the opening for times the fireplace
is unused. The damper alone is seldom sufficient.
- Be certain all windows close properly. Multi-layer and sealed glass is essential
for best conservation of energy. Heavy drapes are another good barrier. Close them
as often as you can.
- Check the seals on the exterior doors and repair them as needed and learn to keep
them closed as much as possible (don't stand at the entrance with the door open while talking, etc.)
- Seal cracks in walls and baseboards. Do you have any baseboards temporarily
removed? You would be surprised how much "breathing" this will add to the house.
Seal holes where nails or hooks previously were used in walls and ceilings.
- Do you have speakers in your walls or ceilings? They are a big source of air movement.
- If possible, caulk the opens of electrical wires and plumbing as they meander through walls. This
will usually be most successful during new construction. Position the plumbing escutcheons against
the walls properly and make certain they stay there. If necessary, seal behind them. These are the
rings over pipes where they penetrate walls. They should be flush with the wall to somewhat seal
off the air movement around the pipe at the penetration. If the holes for penetration are too large, then
they must be repaired.
- The blue areas of this picture are usually areas that are well insulated. The problem is the red area.
This is the kind of situation that is all too common. Many times the red wall is not even insulated. Since it
is higher than the other walls, it becomes an "outside" wall. Remember, the attic is outside the living quarters.
The hot air of the attic can (as the arrows show) go right down in the wall the full length of the height of the wall.
This is a hot wall. Even though it has sheetrock on both sides of most of the wall it is a single wall in the attic and the area below ceiling level is the equivalent of a single wall because it is open to the outside (attic) air. Even if it has insulation in it, it can still get hot air. It is equal to a single wall and may add as much as a half ton of cooling load for the unit. Big waste of money. And I see it all the time.
Look for any exterior wall that is a "single" wall. This is a wall that will have bricks or sheet rock
on one side, but you can see studs in the open wall on its other side. It may even be filled with
insulation stapled between the studs, but that doesn't eliminate the need for a better wall. This should be corrected. You must add another layer of sheetrock or paneling to make it a "double" wall. These are especially common under the platforms of air conditioners and sometimes
these walls will "breath" right into the attic.
Other common places you will find them are
around fireplaces and in recesses in the attic for cabinets and on vertical sections of vaulted
ceilings. This will be in the attic where one ceiling height is greater than another as in the above picture.
If you look down from the attic into the cavity around the fireplace
in MOST homes you will see single walls all the way from the attic to the floor. If there is even insulation
initially installed, it may be on the bottom in a heap. I see it all the time. Remember, the attic
is exterior also. Don't forget to seal around the pipe opening for the gas to the fireplace if you have this
and be aware that brick, rocks, sheetrock, and wood are extremely poor insulators.
What about the floor on your frame home? Is it insulated?
- Set the hot water heater temperature to the lowest setting you will like. 120 degrees may be quite
satisfactory once you try it. Ask your plumber to test the water heater to make sure the internal pipes
for water refills and discharge are still proper and that the build-up of deposits is satisfactory. Almost no one I know drains out these deposits as they should. They create enormous additions to the utility bills every month. If the
water heater is ten years old, replace it. You may be surprised at the difference. The cost of the new heater
is small in comparison to the continual excess in utility costs.
- If you have to replace your roof, be sure to get one that is a light color. It will reflect more heat and will
absorb less than the darker colors.
- Plant some shade trees if you don't already have them.
- Don't open up the house for ventilation unless you think it will be possible for weeks on end.
Moisture will invade the environment of your indoors in massive proportions. It will be absorbed into
walls, concrete slabs, bricks, books, mattresses, carpet, and any other porous mass in large quantity. The work
of the air conditioner, when turned back on, will be increased formidably for the next three weeks while it works to
remove that moisture. It will cycle on and off just fine during the recovery, but it will just run longer and more
frequently. The most work a cooling system does is removal of moisture. A lot of money is spent each fall and
spring on needless worry that something is wrong with the air conditioner during this recover period. "It just runs
so much," is the complaint. "It must be low on gas or something." "My thermostat has messed up". I know you want to ventilate, but be aware of the costs.
- Don't forget to check Bubba's room. Over the lamp and stand...pull back the drapes...behind the blinds...close his window.
And have a chat with him about conservation of utilities. And repair the sheetrock where his buddy's drum set knocked that hole in it last summer. Check for loose exterior siding on the second floor wall and replace the bricks you removed two years ago on the back of the house when you replaced that outside faucet.
- Make sure the attic is ventilated really well. Keep it as mild a temperature up there as possible. If you have
exhaust fans, make sure they are working. Check to see that no insulation is blocking the ventilation openings.
- Check all the toe boards under cabinets and vanities for proper seals. Sometimes these are open to "single"
wall construction on outside walls or to plumbing holes.
- I'm not even going to mention the heater on the pool or the green house, the workshop out back, or the flood lights.
- You might want to move that extra food freezer from the utility room to the garage and don't leave heat producing appliances running
unless in use--such as irons for clothing or hair.
The high side pressure on a 10, 11, 12 or 14 SEER unit should be
about 220 to 240 pounds pressure on a hot day. Check to see
that the subcooling
is just 10 to 22 degrees. The superheat should be set perfectly even
if it is a heatpump and works for heating in the wintertime. If you have
one of these two set right and the other is not, you have a
problem somewhere.
A faulty reading here might indicate a restriction of the air flow
through the cooling coils. If you have been using the cheap filters
for very long, this is undoubtedly the case. Remove the front cover
from the coil and with a mirror and light or a small amount of prying,
look at the under side of the coils to see how much dirt, etc. you can see
on the surface. If you see quite a bit on the surface, then you can
just imagine what must be trapped inside the layers of the coil.
This will add tremendously to your utility bill in both the cooling
and heating seasons.
You will not be able to clean it in place. It will have to be removed
by a technician and cleaned properly. It is worth it, though, for it will
save you a lot of utility costs in the future. Us the better filter type
and maintain it well in the future.
NOTE: To find a really good service tech, ask all the people you trust
and see who they most repeatedly recommend. I don't mean just
the company they recommend, I mean the
technician's name. If they don't know his name, he isn't really
the person you want anyway. They WILL KNOW his name if he is
dependably solving their problems and they have requested him or her
when they have called for service repairs.
Check all these things and I feel sure you will find the problem.
¹ Brand names, product names or trademarks listed belong to their respective holdings.
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and send me your request by e–mail or phone.
1–866–584–0355 (toll free) or 903–759–2160 FAX 903–759–4605
If you have
comments or suggestions, please email me at James' A/C Co.
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