The Heating & AC Blog

After having issues with the last heating and cooling supplier, I’m thankful that I haven’t had any problems with the newest one

Sometimes I make compromises on my purchases because I’m limited heavily on selection. I wanted to live on beautiful land where I don’t have to worry about contaminated groundwater, but that pushed me further and further away from any metropolitan hubs. What little selection of businesses I have in my small town and the neighboring ones is what I am limited to, barring any online shopping. As far as basic groceries are concerned, I’m not particularly upset at the lack of variety compared to the city. We get most of what we need at the few locations in our town. The chain grocery store here stocks many of the items that the locally-owned grocery store lacks. If one doesn’t have what you want or need, at least you can shop at the other. This is much more troublesome with contractors, because you aren’t being guaranteed the option to buy a good or service that you’d find in any other location. I can walk into a Walmart tomorrow and buy the same can of milk at the same price as my mother would in her town two states over, but if we need HVAC services we’re left to the quality of the local technicians near our homes. She has more to choose from as far as HVAC companies are concerned, while there are only three in my small town. After having issues with the last heating and cooling supplier, I’m thankful that I haven’t had any problems with the newest one. They offered me a maintenance contract at a lower price than what I’ve seen anywhere else in the past 10 years. The technicians are also friendly and knowledgeable.

 

Indoor comfort business

My wife and I always wanted a second home, but we assumed it would take a lot longer than a few years after opening our joint business together. Like the two pragmatic people we are, we started our enterprise assuming that we wouldn’t make enough revenue to pull an income from it for a few years at least, but that changed rather quickly as the money started flying in. After continually reinvesting our revenue back into our business, we reached a point where we had scaled enough to stay successful moving into the future. That’s when we realized that we could take an income from the business itself. And as we saved for a few years, that income grew at an unexpectedly exponential rate. So before we knew it, we were looking at possible second homes to buy for vacations every year. At one point we wanted to get a beach condo down south, but the aggressive hurricane seasons every year made us both think twice about doing that. Instead, we settled on getting a lake house in the southern section of our state. We get a slightly warmer climate without having to cross state lines or going so far into a different environment that we’re suddenly dealing with something frightening and alien. Our lake house was listed at an affordable price because it needed new kitchen appliances and repairs done to the guest bathroom shower. The first thing we had to do was get a new heating and cooling system for the lake house. We opted for two heat pumps—one for the ground floor and one for the second floor. The heat pumps cover both heating and cooling operations flawlessly in temperatures above 20 degrees fahrenheit.

a/c service

I decided to start looking at older homes in my area after failing to secure a newer property for sale on my meager budget.

The real estate market is getting crazy all over the country and I have family members in a different state who are going through the same issues as I.

When I found a home that reminded me of my grandparents’ old house before they passed away, I decided to take it and view it as a slow renovation project. It’s not so bad if you can do a lot of the work yourself on the weekends when you have time, but otherwise it would have been me biting off more than what I can chew. I have had no choice but to break the renovation projects apart and do them step by step. Even though I want new kitchen appliances, there are other parts of the house that need immediate attention first. While the roof is now fixed, I have a window in the attic that needs to be replaced. When I was up there recently, I saw that there was some damage to my ductwork and realized there were visible air gaps where I could see light shining in from below. That’s when I decided to call my heating and cooling supplier, and he confirmed my suspicions about the damaged ventilation system. We went over options for new HVAC systems, and I opted for a new boiler heating system to bypass the ductwork. Running heated air through attic ductwork is extremely inefficient, even if there are no air gaps of any kind, because the attic is always going to be colder from having no climate control up there. Your warm air will immediately lose a few degrees of heat in the process.

temperature control

My father owned a motel company and then quit at 65.

I was the 1 that inherited the business.

I saw the issues my father dealt with on a morning to morning basis. The people renting motel rooms were awful plus constantly causing problems. There was a main bar that required so much licensing, paperwork plus hiring of workers. It seemed like the bar was more work than it was worth. When I took over I changed the company. There is no more bar, instead it is a big apartment that my property manager now lives in. The motel rooms are now efficiency apartments. Typically these are apartments of people that the state pays for. They are either on disability or have drug problems. The house has a small family room, bathroom plus 1 study room. I changed 16 motel rooms into 8 efficiency apartments. The company now makes way more currency than what it used to as a motel, every house is filled plus it more than pays for my property manager. My dad used to go to the company everyday doing paperwork or talking with the maids. Now I just sit at home while someone else handles it. There are no cleaners, bartenders or other employees to worry about either. My property manager is worth his weight in gold. He only handles hiring plumbers, electricians, Heating, Ventilation as well as A/C contractors or any other needed handyman service. I just need to ok hiring them first. That is all. I now make quite a bit of currency on a company that I spend little time plus brain power on. It is the best.

 

Plumbing

I have a dining room that has the most gorgeous floor.

The previous owner took seaglass and laid it all on wood flooring so that it made almost an ocean pattern.

They then took epoxy and poured it over the glass to make a smooth, shiny finish. For years I loved that portion of the house. I even got a table that was epoxied similar to it. Well epoxy doesn’t last forever. Moving my table around on the floor, the chairs going in and out and people walking across it create wear and tear. Certain spots looked dingy and others had scratches on them. I am not artistic or handy in any way. I knew that epoxy could be reapplied to make the floors look new, but I just didn’t have the skills. I hunted around online and found a commercial and residential cleaning company. That can handle stained grout, gross carpets, pressure washing and they refinish floors. They do epoxy floor installation and restoration. After giving my floor and even my table a facelift, the dining room looks that much better. I can see all the pieces of the sea glass again and it is just beautiful. I was worried that I would need to cover my gorgeous floors with a rug in order to protect them. Knowing there is a company that can do the epoxy quickly and quite cheaply, I can use my floors like normal and just get them patched when needed. I think next time I hire them I will have them continue in my living room area and clean up the grout lines on my tile floors.

dryer vent cleaning

I live in the northeastern part of the country, where the weather is always a concern. The winter cold lasts for more than 50% of the year. We deal with temperatures down to negative twenty degrees and feet of snow on the ground. In the summer, the temperature climbs into the high eighties with brutal humidity. In-between, we can expect rain, high winds, freezing rain, hail and blizzard conditions. Because of the conditions, we spend the majority of our time indoors. Whenever the weather is halfway decent, I head outside to run, ride my bike, swim or kayak. I have invested into all different types of clothing to combat the weather. I have tanks and shorts that wick away moisture when it’s extra hot and I’m sweaty. I have long pants and long sleeves that are designed to hang onto body heat so that I can be outside in the cold. Most of the time, I need to workout indoors. I have set up a home gym and invested into all different types of equipment. I’ve bought a treadmill, an incline bench, a set of free weights, a mini trampoline, resistance bands and a jump rope. I do everything I can to keep the workout as interesting as possible. Doing the same exercises day after day gets boring. It’s difficult to stay motivated and push myself. I wish that I could join a gym and have access to more diversity of equipment. Unfortunately, the commute is simply too far to make a membership worthwhile. Instead, I just look forward to the rare day of moderate temperatures.

Personal Fitness Expert

For me, exercise is a daily part of life. I consider it as important as brushing and flossing teeth, washing my face and combing my hair. It’s something I do for an hour every morning. I feel that it’s extremely important to take very good care of my body. I want to stay strong, healthy and maintain a proper weight. I hope to enjoy peak quality of life as I grow older. There are days when I am tired, stressed, busy or have a headache and don’t feel like working out. I never skip a workout unless I am throwing up. I’ve worked out with a fever, allergie symptoms and an upset stomach. I exercise even when I have sore muscles. I sometimes push myself too far. I’ve strained my trapezius muscle, pulled my psoas muscle and got to the point where it hurt to walk around. I make sure to take the time to thoroughly warm up at the beginning of the workout. I thoroughly stretch all of my different muscles and loosen up my joints. I am careful about switching up the types of exercises I do from one day to another. While I like to include some type of aerobic exercise in each workout, I am careful about resting and avoiding too many days of hard impact in a row. I intersperse workouts with riding my bike, kayaking and swimming. I add in strength training, including lifting weights, plank holds, lunges and squats. I always go through various types of ab crunches and work on flexibility, balance and stamina. At the end of the workout, I am conscientious about the cool down.

 

Personal Fitness Programs