You may not have heard of short-cycling, but you may have noticed it in your house. It’s when your air conditioning system turns on and off more often than normal. Your air conditioner’s cooling cycle is the process of it turning on at a request from the thermostat, running until it registers the house has reached the thermostat setting, then shutting down until the thermostat makes a request again. Most AC cycles last for 15 minutes or more, and if you keep the thermostat at the same setting during the day, the cycles should have a steady pattern.
When that pattern becomes the AC turning on and off multiple times over an hour—less than 15 minutes on at a time—then it’s short-cycling.
Your air conditioning system has two fans that are essential for it to work. The fan you’re most used to hearing and feeling is the indoor blower fan. This fan is located at the bottom of the HVAC cabinet, where it pulls air from the return air ducts and then pushes it past the evaporator coil, where it’s cooled, and then into the ventilation system.
You’re staying indoors much more these days. Probably much more than you ever expected or ever wanted. So it’s a good time to talk about indoor air quality—starting with the bad news.
You might see the words drain clogs in the title and think, “Wait, Touchstone isn’t a plumbing company.” True, but we’re air conditioning professionals with a long history of helping people stay cool in Florida weather, and so we know all about a specific type of drain clog: the air conditioning system drain clog.
Air conditioners get a head start on the summer in Florida, so you’ll already have your air conditioner running on a routine schedule during the spring. But what if your air conditioner doesn’t seem to be up to the task? Why does it seem like it isn’t able to do the job it once did? Why is it starting to give you trouble?
Warm weather settles in early during the year for Florida—if it can ever be considered to have “gone away” in the first place. If you’re looking to change your
Spring arrives officially next month. And in Florida, it’s already unofficially here. Time to prepare your home’s central air conditioner for another sweltering summer slam. How do you do that? Call your reliable professional HVAC technician (spoilers: that’s us) and tell them you want a pre-summer AC tune-up and inspection.
The heat pump is common in some parts of the US, almost unknown in others. You don’t often find heat pumps at work in places with cold winters, but they’re increasingly popular in warmer climates like those on the West Coast, the Southwest, and right here in Florida.
What’s the most common type of home heating system in the U.S.? The natural gas furnace by a wide margin. Gas furnaces produce large amounts of heat and can warm up a house faster than almost any other type of heater. The lower cost of natural gas makes them attractive as well.