The Heating & AC Blog

I love getting new gadgets that help me with daily tasks and needs.

It’s still hard for me to think of a more versatile tool than a quality smartphone.

They replaced watches, GPS devices, MP3 players, flashlights, calendars, and many small, single-purpose electronic devices that you would have purchased in Radioshack back in the 1980s and 1990s. This is just scratching the bare surface of what a smartphone can do in all of its capacities. The best feature I’ve been exploiting recently is curbside pickup at all the local stores. These companies have apps where you can make an order online, pay for it ahead of time, and then pick it up from the store inside or at your car in the parking lot. Once your order is ready, the app sends a notification to your phone so you can head to the store. When you arrive, you hit the “check in” feature on the app and the employee brings out your order. It’s hard to beat those kinds of features when you compare smartphones to previous iterations of the cell phone. But as much as I love new technology, I’m still reluctant at times to embrace something that seems foreign to my own experiences. My girlfriend urged me to get one of those new 3-in-1 air purifiers for my bedroom after I told her about my respiratory allergies. I’m glad I listened to her because it comes with a pre-filter that is made from activated charcoal fibers. Aside from collecting large dust particles and preventing them from getting into your HEPA filter, they also absorb odors in your air. If you have pets, these charcoal filters could knock down dog or cat odors in your house.

 

hvac contractor

Traveling across the country was miserable when my parents used to drag my siblings and I around in a station wagon and forced us to camp in mosquito-ridden tents every night along the way.

When you can’t afford basic amenities that many take for granted when they travel regularly, the idea of “traveling to find yourself” starts to lose its appeal. I was so sick of it that I had no ambitions in college to study abroad or do exchange programs with universities throughout the country. I just wanted to find a job, get an apartment, and start my life once and for all. Although it wasn’t an expectation, I was also lucky to find a wonderful partner at this time as well. My wife and I wouldn’t get married until a few years later, but we met each other in a coffee shop that is within walking distance of our former college campus. She was a senior and I had just graduated, and I noticed she was using a textbook from a psychology course I had just finished myself. I offered a friendly comment about her class and she seemed excited to meet someone who had been in the same exact course just one year prior. Naturally, it didn’t take long for us to get closer and eventually fall in love. Now that we’re married, we do a lot of traveling back and forth to our parents’ homes. My in-laws recently put a brand new ductless mini split in their guest bedroom and I was in heaven the last time we visited. The cooling effect from the ductless mini split is powerful and impressive, and it manages heating at temperatures above 40 degrees as well! I would love to have a ductless mini split for our basement back home, but we don’t have the money budgeted for something like that.

 

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As much money as I save by cooking all of my food, I also save on heating and cooling service and repairs by signing up for maintenance contracts.

I started cooking with my parents when I was only four years old. They taught me how to mash potatoes and I was in heaven when I ate them and realized I had helped with the process. I credit them both for instilling a love for cooking in my mind that has carried over into the current day. Although I gave up the idea of cooking professionally when I quit my job as an assistant cook and went to college for IT, I still cook nearly all of my meals throughout the week. It’s a satisfying experience for me, and I even created a standing workstation in the kitchen that I can use to keep working while using the fry pan or soup pot. I don’t have to run back and forth to my home office this way, at least when I’m in the process of cooking, eating, or watching TV from the screen in the living room that I can easily see from the kitchen counter. As much money as I save by cooking all of my food, I also save on heating and cooling service and repairs by signing up for maintenance contracts. You pay an annual rate and it includes four service appointments and filter replacements. My HVAC technician will top-off my refrigerant while running diagnostics on the whole system to make sure there aren’t any problems that need to be fixed. One thing that he always mentions when he arrives is how good the house smells! It’s always from whatever food I have cooking in the kitchen, so I consistently offer some to him when he’s ready to leave if the meal is finished and ready to serve.

gas furnace

The science of air quality is fascinating, especially when you realize that we learn more about our environment as new equipment and technology is developed.

Imagine how early chemists and biologists felt when using rudimentary microscopes for the first time! Just being able to see what was once invisible to the naked eye would have been life changing, especially with an ancient worldview that doesn’t necessarily account for these microorganisms.

Going through these paradigm shifts was painful for many scientists, because nowadays you’re not dealing with the church questioning your findings, but your own colleagues. Existing scientific theories can create dogmas within the minds of researchers and it takes sufficient momentum to dislodge those worldviews into accepting new data and empirical facts. Some people were reluctant to accept the performance variance in different kinds of face masks during the pandemic, but there is solid science backing up these companies’ claims. The same can be said for air filters with different MERV ratings. My old roommate would insist that one of those flimsy MERV 3 filters that barely collect dust was good enough for our shared apartment. These days I use a MERV 14 filter because of my severe allergy problems. The MERV rating tells you how strong the filter is and what kind of particles it can collect. Ideally, you want a filter with the highest MERV rating that you can afford without the filter being too restrictive of general air flow. However, HVAC filters are so advanced these days that my MERV 14 filters for instance are fully capable of retaining healthy air flow while they’re in use.

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I am incredibly lucky to have good parents.

My college roommate came from a broken home and was completely financially independent of both parents by the age of 19.

I remember helping him with tax forms to get him financial aid from the school after he could no longer use his parents’ financial information for FAFSA and college admissions. This was obviously stressful for him from my standpoint, but I genuinely can’t imagine how terrible that must have felt from his perspective. He has absolutely no safety net if he fails in life and needs an emergency loan to keep his car on the road or his rent paid. I was much more privileged in this regard. My parents are certainly not wealthy, but they have enough in savings where I could ask for a loan if I absolutely needed it for a serious reason. That’s how I am able to use my air conditioner again after it broke last week. I made the mistake of neglecting my air conditioner filter changes and let the filter sit inside the machine for six months without changing it. Needless to say, I had cracks in my evaporator coil and I needed a new one to have working cooling again in my house. If it weren’t for my loving and gracious parents, I don’t know what I would be doing right now. I would have an extremely hot and uncomfortable house, that’s for sure. Now I need to make a better effort at saving so I have a safety net of my own to cushion me if something ever happens that I don’t expect ahead of time.

 

Heating tune up

My wife and I met in chemistry classes in college.

We were both biology students and happened to be in several of the same classes over a two-year span, giving us a few opportunities to be lab partners on a handful of class assignments and projects. Before the end of that second year, I asked her out on a date expecting a negative response. She agreed and we went on a mini-date at the art museum down the street from our college campus in between classes the following day. We had so much fun that we scheduled a second date, and then a third. I don’t know where all of the time went, because before I knew it we were married and living together in a studio apartment downtown. It was a magical time, and we were constantly planning our moves to secure an actual house we could purchase and live in for the next few decades while raising children. We were lucky that we found a place where the previous owner had just replaced the central HVAC system. If you’re buying a house and the air conditioner or furnace are getting close to their expiration dates, you need to factor this into the cost of the entire property. The only thing we did was add an air purifier to the central HVAC system, otherwise we kept everything the same as it was before we moved in. The only thing I don’t like is that my wife really loves to turn the a/c down low when we sleep at night. I’m always shivering under the covers as a result!

 

Propane boiler

It’s nice having a strong air conditioner that rarely struggles to keep my house nice and cold when it’s hot outside

My love for hiking in the woods started early. I feel lucky to have a dad who was an avid outdoorsman in his younger years. Before he met my mother, he went on hiking and hunting trips all of the time with his friends that he lived with at the time. Back then my dad was living in southern Michigan and would sometimes drive into southern Ontario to hike near Lake Huron. But he and his friends are now all scattered around the country in various places. He hasn’t seen any of his high school friends in ages, and during the years since my father hasn’t really made any new friends to be completely honest. His job consumes a lot of his time and whenever he is willing to do something outside, the most I can do is get him to accompany me on a short hiking trip. More often than not I’m going on my hiking trips completely alone, but I don’t mind. It gives me a chance to clear my head and figure out solutions to problems that are grappling with my mind throughout the week. The fresh air is good for my head and exercise is good for my sedentary body. If I get too overheated when I’m out in the woods hiking, I know that I can come home and cool off with their air conditioning set to a cold setting. It’s nice having a strong air conditioner that rarely struggles to keep my house nice and cold when it’s hot outside. I can’t imagine how disappointing it would be if I was stuck with a poor a/c that never worked as well as I hoped.

heating tune up