Kool Breeze of Northwest Florida, Inc Blog: Archive for the ‘Heating’ Category

What to Do if Your Furnace Won’t Provide Heat

Thursday, February 5th, 2015

A furnace that won’t heat isn’t really of any use to you. As such, it behooves you to get it fixed as soon as possible. Now, you probably don’t have the tools or the expertise to actually repair your furnace yourself. However, there are a few steps you can go through before calling a professional technician. At the very least, you can eliminate some possible causes of the problem. Let’s take a look at what you can do if your furnace isn’t providing heat.

Check the Thermostat

The thermostat is the core of your heating system, responsible for actually deciding when your home receives heat and for how long. As such, a malfunctioning thermostat can disable the entire system, even if the furnace itself is perfectly healthy. Have a look at the thermostat and make sure that the settings and temperature are correct. If the temperature is obviously incorrect, or anything else is displaying strangely, then you may have a thermostat issue.

Listen

If your furnace is actually on, but not providing heat, listen for the sound of the furnace’s air handler. The air handler is the part that actually circulates air throughout the house, and you should be able to hear the fan blowing when the furnace is on. If not, then you have an issue with your air handler. It is possible that the motor is burned out, or that some other kind of electrical shortage has deprived the handler of power. Either way, you should shut your furnace down and call a professional if you don’t hear the fan blowing. Otherwise, heat can become trapped in the furnace and cause it to overheat.

Check the Ignition

Faulty ignition is a very common cause of furnace failure. In older furnaces, it’s easy to check if the ignition is working. Simply look for the pilot light burning underneath the furnace. If the light is out, then that’s probably the source of your problem. Newer furnaces are more difficult to assess, as they use electronic ignition systems with little or no visible signs of malfunction. Even so, you should try starting your furnace while watching the burners to see if they ignite. If not, then you probably have an ignition problem.

If your furnace isn’t providing heat, call Kool Breeze. We offer quality furnaces and professional furnace services throughout Pensacola Beach.

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A Few of the Advantages of Ductless Heating

Friday, January 30th, 2015

Ductless heaters have often been used in areas where any kind of centralized heating is either too expensive or not physically viable. They are favored by apartments and other smaller living areas because they do not rely on ducts, making them only able to heat the rooms in which they are installed. This may seem like a disadvantage when compared to the reach of central forced air systems. However, there are a number of reasons to prefer ductless heating, even in a larger living space. Let’s take a look at a few of the advantages of ductless heating.

Energy Efficiency

Centralized forced air heating systems are actually incredibly inefficient when it comes to transporting heat across the house. Ducts are extremely fragile systems, prone to leaks of all kinds from various causes. This causes a staggering amount of heat to be lost every time the heater turns on. The US Department of Energy has estimated that as much as 30% of a forced air system’s heat is lost to duct leaks every time it’s turned on.

Ductless heating systems don’t have to worry about any of this, because they deliver heat directly into the room. They are also not combustion based systems, which means they don’t have to burn any sort of fuel to create heat. Instead, they siphon thermal energy from the air outside and bring it into the room. This makes ductless heating systems quite a bit cheaper to operate than a lot of other systems.

Versatility

Centralized heating is also not very sensitive to the individual needs of a home’s occupants. Most of the time, a central heating system has two states: on and off. It does not account for varying temperature levels in various rooms, only for the immediate area around the thermostat. This “one size fits all” solution can lead to hot and cold spots throughout the house, as well as wasting energy on rooms that don’t need heating.

Ductless heating systems avoid this problem by only having one room to worry about. If you have a ductless heating system installed in each room, you have the option to not only set a different temperature for each but to only heat the rooms that are occupied at the moment. This saves you quite a bit of money.

If you’d like to know more, call Kool Breeze. We offer professional heating services in the Fort Walton Beach area.

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Warning Noises from Your Furnace: A Guide

Friday, January 23rd, 2015

Furnaces are notorious for making strange noises during operation, particularly after years of use. While not all of these sounds indicate a major issue, you should call a professional anytime you hear something unusual coming from your furnace. Let’s take a look at some of the more common warning noises that can come from your furnace, and what problems they can indicate.

Grinding

A grinding noise coming from your furnace indicates that the bearings in your air handler motor are wearing down. The air handler is the section of your furnace responsible for the circulation of warm air throughout your house. The air handler motor is what turns the fan and keeps the air circulating. Inside the motor is a group of bearings, designed to lubricate the motor and keep it running smoothly. Over time, however, the bearings can lose their lubrication. This actually increases the resistance on the motor, causing it to eventually overheat and burn out. If you hear grinding coming from your furnace, you should call a professional immediately before you have to replace the motor.

Squealing

Squealing coming from your furnace is also often located in your furnace’s air handler. The motor is connected to the fan by a rubber loop, called a “fan belt.” This belt is responsible for the transfer of motion that makes the air handler fan turn. Over time, the fan belt stretches and cracks, creating more friction between the various parts of the air handler. That is what creates the loud squealing noise that you can hear when your furnace starts. If not treated right away, the fan belt will break and render the air handler unable to operate.

Banging

A banging noise can actually have a couple of different causes. It could be your ducts expanding and contracting from the hot air running through them, which isn’t a big deal. It could also be due to part of your burner assembly firing late, due to carbon build up on the burner itself. That is a big deal, and needs to be treated. You’ll need to call a professional to confirm the source, one way or the other.

To schedule an appointment or if you’d like to know more about our heating repair options in Navarre, call Kool Breeze today.

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Heating Installation: Furnaces vs. Heat Pumps

Wednesday, January 14th, 2015

If you have a working set of ducts installed in your home, you generally have two choices available when it comes to heating installation in Pensacola Beach: a furnace or a heat pump. Most central heating systems in the U.S. are furnaces, consisting of a combustion chamber, a filter, a blower, and a venting system, and installed in a closed space like an attic or closet, or in a garage or basement. A heat pump is actually a heating and air conditioning system that contains an outdoor component and an indoor air handler, just like a traditional air conditioner.

Which system is best for your home? We’ll go over both heat pumps and air conditioners in today’s post, but be sure to contact a professional to determine which type, size, and model of unit is best suited for your heating needs.

Furnace

Furnaces are popular because of the generally low cost of installation as well as reliability. And if you’re skeptical of what a furnace can do for you because you’ve owned a poor-performing furnace in the past, then you may be missing out on an opportunity to get a new highly efficient updated model. Today’s furnaces are more efficient than ever, providing homeowners with a range of options to choose from including those with very high efficiency and performance ratings and advanced safety features.

Heat Pump

A heat pump uses refrigeration technology to move heat from one area to another, as the chemical blend can easily convert from a liquid to a gas and back again to absorb and dissipate heat. In the cooler weather heat is absorbed from the outside air to move indoors. This is cost-effective because it is more efficient for a system to move heat around than to generate heat.

It is often wise to get a heat pump if you need a new air conditioning and heating system. However, if you are only replacing an older furnace, a heat pump may not be your best bet. A heat pump replaces an air conditioning system, and it can come out to quite an expense if you replace a nearly new AC unit.

Call Kool Breeze for an honest assessment of your heating needs and to schedule new heating installation in Pensacola Beach.

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Heat Pumps vs. Furnaces: The Pros and Cons

Wednesday, January 7th, 2015

Heat pumps are quickly rising in prominence across the country, though they haven’t quite caught up to furnaces in terms of sheer numbers. With so many homeowners becoming aware of heat pumps for the first time, however, there are a lot of questions regarding which system would work best in which environment. Here, we’re going to try to answer some of those questions. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of both heat pumps and furnaces.

Heat Pumps

Heat pumps are a unique type of home heating system, in that they don’t rely on combustion to produce heat. Instead of burning fuel, heat pumps move heat from one place to the other. This is accomplished through the heat pump’s main components: the indoor unit and the outdoor unit.

When the heat is turned on, the outdoor unit evaporates refrigerant in a coil located inside its casing. The gaseous refrigerant draws thermal energy out of the surrounding air before carrying it down the refrigerant line to the indoor unit. The indoor unit then condenses the gas back into a liquid, releasing the thermal energy so that it can be used to heat the home.

Heat pumps are remarkably energy efficient, as they do not burn fuel to heat a home. They rely only on electricity and ambient thermal energy to operate. If you want to save money on heating bills, a heat pump is a good choice.

Unfortunately, the heat pump’s reliance on thermal energy in the air can also be problematic. In climates that frequently reach freezing temperatures, there often isn’t enough thermal energy for the heat pump to effectively heat the home.

Furnaces

Furnaces are combustion-based systems. That is, they burn some type of fuel in order to produce heat for distribution. They are widely popular across the country, mostly because they are relatively cheap and easy to repair or replace. Natural gas, which is the most popular furnace fuel type, produces a high amount of heat compared to the amount burned. This makes furnaces quite effective in heating a home.

Furnaces are not the most cost-efficient heating systems, however. The average furnace loses a lot of heat to things like duct leaks, and even natural gas furnaces cannot compete with things like heat pumps when it comes to energy efficient heating.

If you’d like to know more, call Kool Breeze. We offer professionally install furnaces in the Fort Walton Beach area.

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The Reversing Valve: The Key Component of Heat Pumps

Wednesday, December 10th, 2014

Heat pumps combine two comfort functions into a single system: forced-air heating and cooling. During the long hot season in Florida, a heat pump can provide a level of indoor cooling that is equal to a comparably sized standalone air conditioner. During the shorter periods of cold weather, a heat pump can switch over to providing a sufficient level of warmth to keep a home pleasant without excessive energy waste. In Pensacola Beach, FL, heat pumps are one of the best ways to stay comfortable around the year.

In most of the important ways, a heat pump works like an air conditioner. The key difference between the two is a component called the reversing valve. Without this valve, a heat pump would remain in one mode or the other. If you have a heat pump that either won’t give you heating or won’t give you cooling, the fault probably lies in the reversing valve. Call Kool Breeze, any time of the day or night, for the repair work necessary to restore your heat pump to full operation.

The Reversing Valve

The job of the reversing valve in a heat pump is to change the route of refrigerant between the indoor and outdoor coils, which will cause the two the exchange their functions of condenser and evaporator. When the refrigerant moves first from the compressor to the indoor coils, the heat pump is in heating mode. When it moves first to the outdoor coils, the heat pump is in cooling mode.

A reversing valve operates by a pressure difference inside a metal tube, controlled by a solenoid. The pressure change moves a slider through the tube, and this slide straddles two of three tube openings. When at rest (de-energized), the slide creates a pressure difference on one side of the tube that allows the refrigerant from the compressor to move first toward the indoor coils and makes them act as the condenser, releasing heat to the inside of the home. When the slide shifts to the other side of the valve (energized) the pressure change now permits the refrigerant to move to the outdoor coils first, making them the condenser and releasing heat to the outdoors. An electrical connection from the thermostat controls whether the reversing valve is energized or de-energized.

A broken reversing valve will mean a heat pump that is trapped in one mode or the other. If this occurs, the reversing valve will need to be replaced (this is less expensive than trying to repair them), and this job requires professionals to handle. The thermostat can also lose its connection to the valve, which will usually trap the pump in heating mode because the valve will remain de-energized. If your heat pump starts to act as if it has a bad reversing valve, call for trained heating technicians right away.

At Kool Breeze, we want you to enjoy comfortable temperatures in your home no matter the weather outside. We install heat pumps in Pensacola Beach, FL and provide all the repair and maintenance work necessary to keep them working for many years. Give us a call the next time you need heat pump service.

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How Does a Heat Pump Work for Heating?

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014

Heat pumps are a great alternative to more traditional systems when it comes to heating your home. More and more homeowners are taking advantage of heat pumps for their energy efficiency, versatility, and safety compared to furnaces and boilers. However, many people are still ignorant of how heat pumps actually work. To remedy that, let’s take a look at the inner workings of a heat pump.

Parts of a Heat Pump

A heat pump system consists mainly of two parts. These parts are the interior and exterior units. As the name suggests, these units are installed inside and outside the home, respectively. The function of these units changes, depending on whether the heat pump is in heating or cooling mode. Since we’re only talking about heating in this article, however, we’ll call the inside unit the condenser, and the outside unit the evaporator. These names refer to the coils that are present in each unit.

The other major part you should know about is the refrigerant line. This line runs between the two units, and is filled with one of several kinds of liquid responsible for transporting heat.

How it Works

When the heat pump is turned on, the refrigerant flows out to the exterior unit and into the evaporator coil. The coil then evaporates the refrigerant, turning itself into a heat sink for the surrounding air. Through this process, thermal energy is leeched from the air and into the coil, where it is stored in the refrigerant gas. The refrigerant then runs inside to the interior unit, where the condenser coil condenses it back into a liquid state. This releases the stored thermal energy, which the interior unit can then use to warm the air to be circulated. The now-cold liquid refrigerant is then moved back out to the exterior unit to continue the process.

This method of moving heat from one place to another, rather than relying on combustion to generate heat, is what makes heat pumps so energy efficient.

If you’d like to know more about how heat pumps work, call Kool Breeze today to speak with a qualified technician. We professionally install heat pumps in the Pensacola Beach area.

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Benefits from Regular Heating Maintenance

Wednesday, November 19th, 2014

Most homeowners ignore heating maintenance until something goes very wrong with their system. This is understandable, considering the perceived cost-benefit analysis. When you schedule heating maintenance without any particular problem, you’re paying money without any visible gain. The problem with that reasoning is that it doesn’t take into account the many benefits of regular heating maintenance. Let’s examine the real reasons you want to schedule regular maintenance for your heating system.

Wear and Tear

As your heater gets older, wear and tear from normal use will begin to degrade the various parts in the heater. This is not something that can be avoided, really. It’s simply a side effect of regular use. The problem you’ll begin to experience is that as this wear and tear progresses, there will be a slow decline in the ability of the various parts in your heater to function as well as they once did. We’re not talking about parts actually breaking, though that will happen if left untreated. This is simply the degradation of efficiency that comes with parts aging and being used regularly.

What does this mean for you? For starters, your heating bill is probably going to go up over time as your heater ages. You may notice it right away, you may not. Either way, as the parts in your heater decline, the heater will be forced to work harder to produce the same heat output. That means you’re burning more fuel for greater total cost.

The second consequence of letting this wear and tear go untreated is eventual breakdown. The parts will eventually reach a point where they wear down enough to break completely. This is where most homeowners notice a problem and call a technician. The issue is that by the time a part wears enough to actually break, it tends to be a lot more expensive to fix.

Regular heating maintenance monitors and fixes these issues before they progress far enough to cause problems. If you schedule heating maintenance even once a year, it is often enough to identify and repair or replace any part that is threatening to cause issues later on. You’ll save money on heating, and on repairs, and have much more peace of mind.

If you haven’t scheduled heating maintenance in a while, call Kool Breeze. We provide professional heating services in the Fort Walton Beach area.

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How Can I Make My Heating More Reliable?

Wednesday, November 5th, 2014

There is no way to ensure that your heating system will never breakdown, but there are some steps you can take to help make your system more reliable. To be clear, we aren’t talking about handling a heating repair for your Pensacola Beach home yourself. Instead, we have some suggestions on how you can make your heating system more reliable:

Schedule Regular Maintenance

It’s recommended that you schedule heating maintenance annually. Maintenance isn’t just a quick review of your system; it’s a full tune-up that also includes safety and performance testing. During a maintenance visit, the components in your system are inspected, cleaned and adjusted, and all moving parts are lubricated. With professional maintenance, your system can perform optimally, which helps prevent potential repairs from developing.

Make Needed Repairs

At some point your heating system will need repair. You may hear signs of problems, such as strange sounds, or see signs of problems, such as leaks or a decrease in heating. It can be very tempting to wait before making needed repairs, or even ignoring signs of problems, particularly if your heating system is still operational. This is never a good idea. Problems with your heater won’t fix themselves and typically become worse with time. Waiting for your heating system to completely breakdown can be a time-consuming and costly mistake. If you are seeing the signs that it’s time to schedule repair, make an appointment with your technician.

Is It Time for Replacement?

Do you have an aging system that has become unreliable? Are you making multiple repairs to your system just to keep it operational? It may be time to consider a heating replacement. One of the many benefits of a new heating system is that you’ll have a reliable heating system that you can count on.

Taking steps toward prevention can help reduce the amount of heating repair you may need in Pensacola Beach. Need more information? Call Kool Breeze today and schedule an appointment with one of our experts.

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What Kind of Home Heating Is Best for Fort Walton Beach?

Wednesday, October 29th, 2014

Even in Florida’s warm environment, winter can bring about some pretty cold days. As fall comes to a close, a lot of homeowners are thinking about upgrading their heating systems to make the following months more comfortable. So, what kind of home heating system is best for a discerning Floridian? Check out some of our recommendations below.

Heat Pumps

Heat pumps are an excellent choice for areas like Fort Walton, with higher average winter temperatures than most other areas of the country. A heat pump is primarily comprised of two units, one indoor and one outdoor. The outdoor unit works by absorbing thermal energy from the air around it. It then sends that thermal energy inside to be distributed by the indoor unit. This is why it is called a heat pump, because it pumps heat from one place to another instead of generating it. This makes the heat pump very energy efficient, resulting in a decrease in the cost of heating for the homeowner. It doesn’t work as well in very cold environments, because there is less thermal energy in the air for it to siphon. This should not be a problem in Florida’s warmer climate, though.

Radiant Heating

Radiant heating systems are boiler-based, and use a series of pipes to distribute heat throughout the house. These pipes are commonly installed between the floor and subfloor of the rooms that are to be heated. The boiler then heats water and distributes it throughout the house. As the water runs through the pipes, heat radiates up through the floor and into the room. Water is a much better conductor of heat than air is, making radiant heating more efficient at delivering heat than forced air systems. By not utilizing ductwork, radiant heating also avoids the 20-30% heat loss to duct leaks that forced air systems experience. Radiant heating does require a bit more of an investment than other systems, but it is one of the best options available when it comes to efficient heating.

If you are interested in upgrading to a new heating system in Fort Walton Beach, give Kool Breeze a call to set up a service appointment today.

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