That’s where point of use water heating comes in. These tankless water heaters are designed to heat your water when you need it heated instead of filling a tank of 50 or 60 gallons and heating it continuously even when you don’t.

How Point of Use Water Heaters Work

A point of use water heater works by directly heating the water supply to a single fixture. So, you would install a point of use water heater on your kitchen sink and only one water supply pipe would go to that heater. When you turn on the hot water faucet, the point of use heater would turn on (using electricity) and heat your water to 170 degrees F.

These devices only work on a single fixture at a time but they are much less expensive to purchase than a whole house tankless hot water system. Additionally, you can control where hot water is available.

The Advantages of Point of Use Hot Water

A tank hot water system can cost hundreds of dollars of year extra to run, especially if your family doesn’t use much hot water. Imagine what happens if you have four children that go off to college. Your “just big enough” tank suddenly becomes way too big and your bill stays unnecessarily high.

Point of use heaters allow you to decide where hot water is available and have instantly available hot water as you need it. The cost of the units and installation is affordable for most homeowners and you don’t have to commit to a whole house system if you are not ready.  Lean more about how to save water and money by calling Bob’s Heating & Air Conditioning.

When to Call for Testing

If you suspect something is wrong with your indoor air, you should call for testing. What constitutes “wrong”? Here are some specific things to watch for related to your health:

• Headaches
• Fatigue
• Dizziness
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Skin Rash
• Eye Irritation
• Nose Irritation
• Throat Irritation
• Respiratory Irritation
• Cough
• Chest Tightness
• Respiratory Infection
• Asthma
• Allergic Reaction
• Lung Cancer

When one or more of these symptoms recurs in your family without a clear cause that your doctor can diagnose, it’s a big warning bell that you may have indoor air quality issues to attend. When that happens, it’s time for testing and inspection.

Checking Your Indoor Air Quality

Indoor air quality problems frequently stem from a specific problem – either an entry point in your home where insulation fails or poor ventilation if the source is inside. The purpose of testing is to check for these problems and pinpoint specific ways to reduce the presence of pollutants and make you feel better.

Testing can be done for a number of pollutants including pollen, mold, mildew, bacteria, dander, dust mites, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, VCOs and other gases and bioaerosols. Specific testing will be done depending on the nature of your symptoms, the severity of the leak or exposure to that contaminant and the potential solutions your contractor considers.

If certain pollutants are found, filtration may not be enough to solve the problem – radon and mold especially require installation of new fans and air filters to reduce the effects of the excess air contaminants.  Please call Bob’s Heating & Air Conditioning to learn more.

If you’re looking for a dependable and lucrative career, being an HVAC technician makes good dollars and sense.  As either a self-employed contractor or as part of a larger company, the business of heating, venting and air-conditioning homes, businesses and institutions is sure to be always available.

Areas of Focus

Depending on the interests of the individual, there are various ways to be involved with HVAC systems.  Some choose to participate only in the initial stages of designing, estimating and selling systems to the customer.  Others focus on the installation while still others are only involved with the regular maintenance and service of existing systems.

An independent sub-contractor may need to be expert in all areas of HVAC systems where a team of technicians can concentrate on their selected interests.

The Road to Certification

HVAC refers to many different kinds of systems powered by numerous different types of energy.  Improvements in the technology create an ever changing fast paced body of required knowledge.  Experience is the best teacher but cannot alone keep technicians up to date.

Most certification programs are based on three to four year apprenticeships combining on the job training with classroom lessons. In community colleges and vocational tech schools, a shorter period is required, only two years for an associate degree that teaches the basics of repair and maintenance as well as air conditioner installations.

No matter which way you choose, final certification is given by either the North American Technician Excellence program or the Air Conditioning Excellence Coalition.  With an official certification in the HVAC field, prospects for better employment and higher wages are nearly guaranteed.

What to Learn

HVAC systems are very technical and full of details.  Installation and maintenance of the systems requires many skills, including working with different kinds of piping, motors, pumps, compressors, ductwork, screens and filters.  You learn the difference between boilers and furnaces, refrigerators, coolers and air-conditioners.

There is so much variety and detail to learn that many individuals choose to focus primarily one or several areas instead of trying to be fully expert about all parts.  No matter the focus, an HVAC tech has opened the door to a satisfying career and steady income.  Please call Bob’s Heating & Air Conditioning to learn more.

So, if asbestos is present in your home, careful testing and inspection should be performed to determine if it poses an immediate risk to anyone in your family.  If there is a slight risk for exposure to asbestos, or any indoor pollutant that should be inspiration enough to improve your home’s ventilation and air filtration.

Where Asbestos Comes From

Asbestos is most commonly found in homes built before 1978 in the insulation, acoustical material, fireproofing, or floor tiles. While home insulation is a common culprit, so too is the insulation placed around pipes and floorboards in the basement.

When the asbestos laden material starts to deteriorate or is damaged, it begins to flake or fray into the air, emitting extremely small particles that are easily breathed. High levels of asbestos in your indoor air are not necessary to expose your family to risk, though they do substantially increase that risk.  For these type of contaminates consider installing a HEPA air filter in your air ducts to capture some of these harmful particles.

What to Do If You Suspect Asbestos

It’s impossible to know for sure if insulation contains asbestos without testing. If you know for sure that there is asbestos and it hasn’t been disturbed, leave it alone. Asbestos is only dangerous when it breaks off and enters the air you breathe. So, the most common abatement technique is to cover it so it cannot get into the air supply.

Contractors are frequently required to carry asbestos removal certification that not only shows they are trained in proper techniques for covering it up, but that any removed asbestos is properly disposed of. If you suspect a problem with your insulation, even if you’re unsure what material it contains, call a contractor immediately for testing.

If testing shows that asbestos is present and it has been damaged, your contractor will recommend an abatement technique to either remove or cover that insulation permanently. Even if asbestos is left behind but is well covered, it should pose no future risk to your family.  Please contact Bob’s Heating and Air Conditioning to set up an indoor air quality test.

Ductless air conditioning offers a solution to most of these problems. Not only does the technology not require ductwork to be installed; it allows for multiple in-room units on a single compressor and it costs significantly less to operate compared to window AC units.

Ductless System Specifications

Ductless air conditioning systems consist of two major components: a compressor which is placed outside and indoor evaporators. With the use of inverter technology, these systems can support multiple evaporators – usually as many as four to a single condenser. This means you can have a single outdoor unit supporting cooling four separate rooms of your home at the same time.

Each of those indoor evaporators acts as a heat pump, allowing you to both heat and cool the room year round. And because the only connection needed between evaporator and condenser is a single refrigerant line, the cost of installation is significantly lower than it would be for a ductwork based central AC system.

Room by Room Benefits

While the primary benefit of a ductless system is the fact that it allows you to install air conditioning in multiple rooms of your house without the need for ductwork, there are other benefits. Not only do you get a much higher energy efficiency rating than you would with traditional window units (many ductless systems are rated at 16 SEER or higher while window units are frequently as low as 10 or 11), but you can control each unit individually. So if a room upstairs doesn’t need to be cooled during the afternoon hours, simply turn off the thermostat in that part of the house and save money.

There are some factors to consider when installing a ductless system. How many rooms do you need cooled? How warm does it get in the summer? Will the system be used for heating in the winter? These are all things you may want to discuss in greater detail with Bob’s Heating & Air Conditioning when you call for an estimate.

One area where people are constantly looking for ways to save money is home heating. Everyone wants to be comfortable and warm in their homes, but that costs money, so homeowners are always on the lookout for the most effective and cost efficient way to keep the house warm.

What is the most cost effective fuel for home heating?

Is it natural gas, electric, fuel oil or propane? How about less conventional heat sources like wood or geothermal pumps?

We all wish there was one easy, all-encompassing answer to this question, like a heating magic bullet that would keep every family warm and happy for pennies on the dollar. Unfortunately, there isn’t. It depends on too many factors for any one solution to work for everyone.

Probably the biggest factor that plays a role in the cost of a particular fuel is its local availability. Resources are available differentially, so that while one option might be cheapest for a family of five in Andover, Massachusetts, the analysis is entirely different for a single person in Kearney, Nebraska.

What is the most cost effective option for you?

That is a better question, but still not one that is necessarily easy to answer.

To figure it out, you need to carefully analyze several factors:

• Local availability (see above)
• Local climate
• Size of your home
• Your family’s needs
• Existing heating equipment
• Your budget

Armed with this information, you can do a careful comparison and choose the perfect heating system replacement for you. For assistance you can use an online calculator to compare fuel costs, such as this one from the Energy Information Administration or this one from Hearth.com. Or, if all else fails, call Bob’s Heating & Air Conditioning for a professional assessment.

Comparing fuel costs and choosing the right solution for you may take some time, but the savings can be well worth it.

Lighting the Torch

Gas is the fuel that fires the flame that heats the air that warms your Seattle home, but electricity is the spark that lights the gas.  The flame is not roaring all the time or just ignites spontaneously.  Think of the athlete igniting the Olympic torch.

A low voltage electric signal from the thermostat opens the valve that controls the amount of gas flow and therefore the flame.  A solenoid coil in the valve senses gas and ensures flame to prevent an explosion or leakage, then opens wide to let the heating begin and shuts down when the desired temperature is reached.

Blown Away

All that heated air must be moved through the ductwork and distributed room to room to create the comfort and this is done by a motor-driven fan which is the largest use of electricity in a gas furnace.  The motor turns on and shuts down according to the relationships between flame, heated air and the thermostat setting.

Known as a draft inducer, a second fan is employed to remove the toxic fumes that are the residue of the burned gas.  These fumes which can be deadly are usually pushed through a PVC pipe to the exterior and released safely into the atmosphere.

Sum Total

The amount of electricity used to ignite the flame is very small, phased through a low-voltage impulse wire, nearly too small to even show on your meter.  Most of the electrical energy contributing the critical role of powering the two fans in gas furnaces adds up typically to less than 600 watts at any given time or about the same as a few light bulbs.

While gas furnaces are much more efficient and less costly than any kind of electric heat, they are useless (and even dangerous) without that little bit of electrical help.

If you have any questions about how your Seattle heating system works, give Bob’s Heating & Air Conditioning a call today!

Sometimes heat pumps have trouble maintaining the right temperature, especially in heating mode. It’s not uncommon, and it has a number of potential causes. Run through this checklist to see if it is something you can fix yourself:

• The outdoor unit is iced up. Running a defrost cycle can usually fix this.
• A snow drift in encroaching on the outdoor unit, making the unit too cold to work properly. Shovel it away and see if that fixes the problem.
• The outdoor unit is not running at all. Sometimes this is simple enough to fix on your own. Read the manufacturer’s instructions to troubleshoot the problem.
• Too much cold air is getting in the house for the heat pump to keep up. Make sure your doors and windows are closed to keep that valuable heat inside.
• Your vents are closed. It may seem obviou, but problems like this can sometimes be attributed to user error. Make sure your vents are open to allow heat in.

This is by no means an all-inclusive list, and it covers just those causes that you could potentially fix yourself. There are many other possible culprits out there that could be more sinister and require professional heating system repairs.

Some of these include:

• The compressor is not running.
• A compressor valve or reversing valve is faulty.
• The thermostat is malfunctioning or needs to be recalibrated.
• The refrigerant level is low or there is a problem with the flow of the refrigerant.
• The heat pump needs routine maintenance.

If your heat pump is not working properly for several days, especially after you have tried some of the DIY solutions above, call Bob’s Heating & Air Conditioning right away. Your heat pump may need repairs before a bigger problem develops.