Touchstone Heating & Air Inc. Blog: Posts Tagged ‘Alachua’

Is Your Furnace Running Inefficiently?

Monday, March 7th, 2022
money-saving-house

Your home’s furnace plays a pivotal role in your overall comfort and well-being. Being the essential resource that it is, it’s also something that necessitates a great degree of value and prioritization. Supporting your furnace is an essential practice in bolstering your home’s heating, as by doing so you can properly identify and mitigate issues that could end up costing you time, money, and peace of mind.

In this regard, it’s a common intent among homeowners to know how to assess their furnace’s performance, so as to ensure it’s functioning to the best of its capacity year-round.

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How Long Will My Furnace Last?

Monday, February 7th, 2022
furnace-old

Nothing lasts forever, and the same goes for the furnace in your house. Sure, it won’t see as much use in Florida as, say, in colder states like New York, Maine, or Rhode Island. Regardless, you still want to get the most out of your furnace even if it isn’t seeing much use.

In this article, we’ll go over how long you can expect your furnace to last, some issues that can shorten its lifespan, and when it’s time to get a new one.

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Amateur AC Repair Errors We Often See

Monday, January 10th, 2022
hand-holding-wrench

Please don’t attempt to make repairs to your air conditioning system on your own if you’re not a trained HVAC technician. And don’t let amateurs take on AC repairs either. It’s that simple: the modern central air conditioner is a complex piece of refrigeration technology that requires years of training and special tools to repair. 

If you have a malfunctioning cooling system in your home, the best way to deal with it is to call us to schedule AC repair in Alachua, FL. We’re responsive professionals with more than two decades of history fixing all types of air conditioning problems.

We can use our experience repairing ACs to explain why amateur tampering can go so wrong. We’ve often inspected air conditioners and discovered mistakes made from some non-professional attempts to fix them. If your current AC was already in your house when you moved in, you may not even realize your cooling system has these “amateur patches,” and they can lead to trouble later. Here are a few of the more common botched repair errors we see.

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What Are the Most Debilitating AC Malfunctions?

Monday, October 4th, 2021
air-conditioner-with-dirty-coils

A busted AC is no fun in Florida heat. In fact, it can be dangerous if you have household members susceptible to heatstroke. This is why we take air conditioning repair in Alachua, FL seriously. When an air conditioning system isn’t working, people need expert help right away—and we’re available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to get cooling systems back to work. 

We have more than two decades of history working on air conditioning systems, so it’s fair to say that we’ve seen it all. In this post, we’ll look at the AC malfunctions that cause the worst problems, i.e. ones that cause an AC to stop working entirely. We recommend calling us when your air conditioner is struggling, because we can help head off an even larger problem. But when you’ve got an AC that won’t work at all because of one of these problems, you’ll know you need to call us!

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What Are the Best Ways to Have Better Indoor Air Quality for My Home?

Monday, July 26th, 2021

family-in-homeIndoor air quality (IAQ) has never been more on the forefront of people’s minds than now. But poor IAQ has troubled homes for the last few decades: as construction creates more airtight houses to boost energy efficiency, indoor contaminants have fewer ways to escape, and less fresh air sweeps through to help keep the air clean. Chances are high that if you’re concerned about the IAQ of your house, you have good reason.

Thankfully, you can find great help to improve your home’s indoor air quality. Our technicians have more than two decades of experience working to help North Central Florida homes enjoy the best IAQ. We’ve listed below a number of ways to improve your home’s air quality. 

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Detecting Problems With Your Commercial Air Conditioning

Monday, June 28th, 2021

commercia-hvac-fans-in-rotationAlong with our great services for homeowners throughout North Central Florida, we also provide service for light commercial HVAC in Alachua, FL, and the rest of our service area. (Light commercial means systems 25 tons and under.) As local business owners ourselves, we understand the difficulties a company can face when their cooling systems give out in the middle of summer. You may depend on the AC to keep customers, clients, and employees happy, or the AC may do a critical job cooling down equipment. No matter how you use your commercial air conditioning, when it fails you’ll need our experts on the job to repair it. 

You want to catch potential AC problems early, before they turn into a full system breakdown leaving your facility without cooling. This presents difficulties, because AC equipment usually sits on the roof of the building. But you still can watch for these warning signs that will tell you to call our team for repair service.

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Want to Pay Less to Cool Your House This Summer?

Monday, April 19th, 2021

MoneySummer weather means higher electricity bills for your house. There’s no way to avoid a rise in costs because the compressor that allows an AC to provide cooling draws on a great deal of power when it runs. The average central air conditioning system uses around 3,000 to 3,5000 watts an hour, adjusted up and down depending on the AC’s size. How much this costs you is predicated on the price of electricity in your area.

As a comparison, if you run the AC in “fan only” mode where the compressor does not turn on, it uses 750 watts an hour on average. This will give you an idea of the increase in electrical use that is part and parcel of running an air conditioner.

However, you might be paying more to cool your house than you should. In fact, you likely are, because there are many ways you can pay less for central cooling that don’t mean having to sacrifice your comfort and sweat it out all summer. Below are a few ways to cut down on the high cost of summer cooling.

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Battling VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) in Your House

Monday, April 5th, 2021

clouds-in-skyWhen you think of harmful or irritating particles in your home’s air, what comes to mind first? Probably dust, dander, bacteria, viruses, and mold spores. These are all problems for indoor air quality and we recommend using air filters or a special air purifier in Alachua, FL to combat them.

But one common pollutant may not be on your list: volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It’s a big term, and one worth knowing because VOCs are major problems for indoor air quality. We’ll explain more below.

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Why an AC Might Cool—But Not Cool ENOUGH

Monday, March 22nd, 2021

heat-and-family-before-fansWhat do you expect from a central air conditioner in a house? The answer is simple: you want it to make the house cool and comfortable when the weather is hot. If the AC can’t do that, what good is it?

Unfortunately, it’s possible to have a central air conditioning system that, while it sends out cool air, doesn’t make a house cool enough for comfort. That’s not something you should tolerate! Instead of spending the summer with the family gathered around the room vents to get closer to the cool air supply like you’re huddling around a dying fire in winter, call us for the air conditioning service in Alachua, FL that will solve the problem. We can find out what’s wrong and see that you have a comfortable home all summer.

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The End of Maintenance? You May Need a New AC

Monday, March 8th, 2021

ac-units-scrapyardIn our past two posts, we wrote about the importance of having regular AC maintenance each spring. We could post plenty more about this topic, since it’s that important—you can have most of your potential AC problem vanish thanks to keeping up with maintenance. There is one AC problem you can’t avoid this way, however, which is that the time will come when your air conditioner must be replaced. Maintenance will postpone that day, but no cooling system can last forever, no matter how much care it receives.

This year might be the year. You schedule maintenance with our technicians, we examine the AC, and explain that it’s not likely to last much longer unless it has expensive repairs—repairs that won’t be worth it compared to replacing it with a new AC.

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