Harrisburg Heating and Air Conditioning

Extend the life of your home air conditioning system by installing and programming a programmable thermostat. Set it so that the temperature is 10 degrees higher when you’re away from home or asleep than it would be when you’re actively using your rooms. It’s called “setup,” and the US Department of Energy says it’s proven to save you significant amounts of money on your energy bills while reducing waste. And demanding less from your home air conditioning system when you’re not really using it is a great way to make it last longer. You should place the programmable thermostat in a spot in your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home where it won’t get “false readings” from being in direct sunlight or the path of a working air conditioning opening. Don’t forget to buy a programmable thermostat for every cooling zone in your home. You can set the part of the system that serves your bedrooms, for example, to run relatively warm during the day and to start cooling an hour before bedtime. Conversely, set the programmable thermostat that controls your living and dining rooms to run warm while you’re out at work or sleeping, because you won’t be using those rooms during those hours. Set the system to start cooling an hour before you get home.

Split ductless air conditioning is a good alternative method for cooling your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home. If you’re not up for the major investment of putting in central air conditioning to your existing home, but you’re tired of having to install and remove window air conditioners each summer, then split ductless air conditioning might be a good solution for you. A split ductless air conditioning system consists of an outdoor condenser unit and an indoor evaporator unit that CROH Heating & Air can mount on the wall of your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home. Thin tubing connects the two units, carrying electricity and refrigerant to the indoor unit, and taking away condensate (water) from it back outside. The indoor units each have their own thermostats so you can set them for a constant temperature. You can install several of them to cool key areas of your home. They run very quietly, unlike window models which are noisier than you realize until you shut them off. A licensed, knowledgeable CROH Heating & Air technician can evaluate your home to determine the type of split ductless air conditioning system that will be right for you, and give you an estimate of what it will cost to install it. Consider split ductless air conditioning now, before you need it.

If last summer’s energy bills had your eyes popping in disbelief, the problem may not be the power company’s exorbitant rates – it may be the air conditioning system in your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home. Higher-than-expected energy bills are an excellent indicator that your home air conditioning system is not operating at its best. If you haven’t been maintaining it for a few years or it has simply begun to wear with age, it may be time to have a licensed CROH Heating & Air technician inspect your system. It may be that a simple repair or a new part will bring your home air conditioning system back to its optimum efficiency. Then again, if your system is old or damaged, you may find that replacing it altogether will save you money in the long run. Don’t wait for even higher energy bills when you fire up your home air conditioning system this summer. When you call CROH Heating & Air, we can thoroughly inspect your system, recommend changes that will increase its efficiency and give you a solid estimate of what it will cost. When you weigh the cost of repairing or updating your system with what it costs you to run it for three months of the year, every year, you are likely to find it worth the investment for years to come.

You shouldn’t be able to smell your home heating system. The most imperative thing: if you smell gas, turn off the heating system, open some windows and call your power company right away. The last thing you want to ignore is a potential gas leak, which could cause a fire. Better to have a power company technician check it for your safety. If your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home fills up with a dry, dusty smell when your heat comes on, the first thing you should do is change your furnace’s air filter. That dusty smell is just the furnace burning dust out of the filter. A clean filter allows the unit to run much more efficiently and cleanly. The owner’s manual that came with your furnace (it might be stored in a little pocket right on the furnace housing) should include instructions on how to do this, but if you’re uncomfortable with it, call in a licensed CROH Heating & Air technician to show you how. If the dusty smell persists, have one of our Heating & Air technician inspect your home heating system. That odor could signify a bigger problem that could get expensive and dangerous if left unattended.

Microsoft Hohm http://www.microsoft-hohm.com/ is a free online program that compiles an energy usage profile tailored to your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home. Then it recommends specific ways you can save energy (and money). Hohm allows you to keep track of your usage and savings online. You can even share your information with family and friends to show how well you’re doing. If you use such a program correctly, it can show you simple things you can do yourself – and reveal to you areas where you might need the help of a licensed CROH Heating and Air technician. Once you have an idea what needs doing, you can call us to confirm Hohm’s recommendations and give you a good-faith estimate of what the improvements will cost. Rest assured that whatever you pay for energy upgrades now will return on your investment in long-term savings on your energy bills for years to come. In fact, making the right upgrades to your home air conditioning system may even save you money in repair or replacement costs, because the system won’t have to work so hard to cool your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home.

Look out your window right now, and you may be overlooking one simple way to control your home cooling costs and extend the life of your home air conditioning system. It’s the sunshine through your windows. For exactly the same reason we encourage you to open your drapes, blinds or shades on the winter days to let the warmth of the sun in, we suggest closing them in the summer. Letting the summer sun beat down on your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home is an effective way to make your home air conditioning work that much harder to keep it cool. The sun really adds heat, so keeping it out means your air conditioning is just cooling the rooms to the temperature you set, not doing battle with the noonday sun. If your home air conditioning system is only doing the job it’s designed to do (without the added workload from the sun), then it won’t require as much energy, and you’ll save money on your energy bills.

It’s so simple, but it can never be repeated enough: keep the area around your furnace clear. Putting anything too close to the furnace can cause a catastrophic fire or an explosion in your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home. Don’t store things within two feet of your furnace. That includes storage bins – plastic burns, too, and the fumes from burning plastic may be toxic. Laundry should not be allowed to pile up anywhere near the furnace (or the bottom of the dryer, for that matter). Most importantly, be sure any chemicals – cleaning products, solvents, oils and the like – are stored as far from the furnace as possible – in a different part of the house, if you can manage it. That’s an open flame under the furnace, and it can set anything around it – even chemical fumes – afire in no time. Go down there right now and look at it, before you forget, and take a few minutes to make whatever changes are necessary to give your furnace a nice, wide safety circle. While you’re at this safety check, test your smoke detectors, too, and replace the batteries if necessary. If the worst were to happen and something near your furnace did ignite, at least you’d have a fighting chance to get out safely if you have working smoke detectors.

If something does go wrong with your home heating system, or there’s an area of your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home that just refuses to get warm no matter what you do, you might be tempted to buy a portable space heater. Be very careful with these devices! They reach very high temperatures and can cause burns, fires or combustion, especially if flammable materials (like drapes, for example, or carpeting) are located within a few feet of the heater. Space heaters can cause electrical fires because they use a great deal of power. Someone could trip over the cord and (a) get hurt from the fall or (b) cause a fire. Space heaters also emit carbon monoxide, but unlike your home heating system, which vents to the outdoors, space heaters simply fill the room with this deadly, invisible, odorless and tasteless gas. If you must use a space heater, be sure it is on a hard flooring surface with several feet of clear space around it, and that it is plugged directly into an outlet (not an extension cord) using a grounded three-pronged plug. And if you’re finding it necessary to use a space heater in your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home, the most important thing you should do is to call a licensed CROH Heating & Air technician to get your home heating system running at optimum performance, in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Your landscaping may be raising your energy bills. It’s true. If you’ve planted trees or shrubs or allowed them to become overgrown around your air conditioning condenser, they may actually be hindering the operation of the unit and reducing the efficiency of the whole home air conditioning system, thus raising your energy bills. Your condenser needs to be able to suck in fresh air from the outside in order to blow cool air inside. If your condenser is blocked by trees, shrubs or even very full flower beds, it may be working extra hard to cool your home. If your system isn’t keeping your Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area home as cool as it used to, before you worry about having to replace or repair anything, check around that condenser. It’s a simple thing to trim back all vegetation – or even pull out plants that are too close entirely — to create a clear zone about five feet wide on all sides around your condenser. This will allow for the free flow of air, and your home air conditioning system won’t have to use so much power to do the same work.

It’s spring in the Harrisburg metro area – the perfect time to do a little preventive maintenance on your home heating system. At CROH Heating & Air, we encourage homeowners to maintain their home heating system all year ‘round by getting annual tune-ups, rather than repairing it at a time when you’re not going to want to wait for a contractor. Instead, have a trained, licensed CROH Heating & Air technician perform an off-season tune-up on your home heating system so you can be sure it will be efficient and effective when the temperatures drop again. With the correct tools for the job, we check your thermostat settings; lubricate all moving parts; check the system controls; Inspect, clean, or change the air filter in your furnace or heat pump; Inspect the flue piping for rust, disconnections or back drafting; and check all gas (or oil) connections, gas pressure, burner combustion and heat exchanger. This ensures greater comfort levels. All of these components have an effect on the efficiency of your home heating system, so a tune-up is the best way to protect, preserve and optimize your system. We perform tune-ups on home heating systems throughout the Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle, Middletown and Palmyra area.