Sound Heating and Air Conditioning Inc. Blog: Posts Tagged ‘Energy Saving’

How a Thermostat Works: A Guide From Covington

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

Your thermostat is designed to closely monitor and maintain the temperature in your Covington home. When you flip the switch, you want your furnace or air conditioner to respond immediately. So, it’s a good idea to learn how it works so that if there is a problem, not only will you know better what needs to be fixed – you can decide whether to call a professional in for help.

Thermostats shouldn’t need input from you other than to set the initial temperature. From there, they are automatic switches. A thermometer inside the thermostat measures the indoor air temperature. When it gets above or below the limit you’ve specified, it triggers the thermostat to send a message to your home comfort system and keep things nice and comfortable.

Types of Thermostat

Thermostats come in two forms –electromechanical and electronic. An electromechanical thermostat is the simplest and has been used for decades to regulate temperature in homes. It has a simple strip or coil of metal that expands as the temperature rises and contract as it lowers. A mercury thermometer is placed on top of the strip. The coil’s movements cause the vial to tip as the temperature changes. There is a pair of electrical contacts on either end of the vial. The mercury can absorb that electrical current when the electrical contacts touch the thermometer. The mercury then acts as a switch to turn on your comfort system.

An electronic thermostat simply has an electronic sensor that measures the indoor air temperature. You set a temperature for your room and when it changes significantly, the switch inside your electronic thermostat is triggered, causing it to turn on your comfort system.

Ways to Upgrade Your Thermostat

Most homes only need the bare minimum in their thermostats. However, there is some very exciting technology on the market these days that can add quite a bit of value to your system. Not only can you install a programmable thermostat, you can opt for zone control systems that allow multiple thermostats in different rooms of your home.

Programming allows you to set temperatures for certain times of the day. This is especially great if you are gone from the house for long periods of time each day. Why heat or cool a home when it is empty? And if you have multiple people with different temperature needs, zone control temperature control allows you to set specific temperatures for specific rooms in your home – a very enticing option for large families or multi-story homes.

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Cooling Your House Naturally in Sammamish

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

In this day and age, it seems like no matter what type of problem you have, there’s a technological solution for it. But is that solution always the best? For instance, just because you can get a high-tech air conditioning system to keep your Sammamish home at the same temperature regardless of the weather outside, does that mean that you should rely solely on that system?

Of course, the choice is yours, but before you decide how best to keep your house comfortable during the warm summer months, it’s a good idea to learn a little bit more about what your other options might be.

  • Cross-Ventilation – One of the easiest ways to take the edge off when the temperature starts to rise inside is to open windows on both sides of the house. This allows the breeze to come in one side and pass out the other, taking the stale, warm indoor air with it in the process and cooling off your house naturally.
  • Stack-Ventilation – If you have a two-story home, you may want to try stack-ventilation. This variation on cross-ventilation involves opening the windows on the bottom floor on one side of your home and on the top floor on the other. The differences in pressure from one area to the next cause fresh outdoor air to be sucked in on the ground floor and pushed out on the top floor, thereby creating a strong air current throughout your home.
  • Blocking Out the Sun – The number one reason that the interior of your house gets hot in the summer is exposure to direct sunlight, so anything you can do to diminish the amount of sun that actually makes it into your home, the better off you’ll be. All you really have to do is close the blinds on those windows where sun can come in to keep the majority of that heat from impacting your indoor environment.
  • Stay Away from Dark Colors – The color of the outside of your home can also have an impact on how hot it gets indoors. Dark colors absorb the heat, while light colors reflect it. So if you want to keep the temperature down inside, stick to light colors on the exterior of your home.
  • The Importance of Shade – Any type of shade will also keep the sun’s heat out of your home. Trees are a great source of natural shade. Awnings can provide great cooling power too without blocking out your view.

If you need more information about how to keep you house cool, ask your HVAC contractor.

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