Seemingly out of nowhere, the holidays are here again. While this has been a crazy year for many people, the steadiness that the holidays bring is a welcome sight. No matter what your plans are for the holidays this year, the ultimate goal is to stay comfortable throughout the season.
Since you’ll likely be spending more time in your own San Antonio home, maintaining the comfort of your home is more important than ever. Plus, if you plan to have any holiday get-togethers, you’ll want to make sure that your guests are comfortable, as well. While there are many elements to comfort, one of the best ways to keep your home comfortable is to ensure that your HVAC system is operating properly with these tips from Beyer Air Conditioning & Heating.
Don’t Block Vents
If you’re like many people, then one of your favorite parts of the holidays is decorating your home. Holiday decor provides an opportunity for you to temporarily change your home’s look and fully embrace the spirit of the season. When moving your furniture around to accommodate these decorations, though, we want to remind you to be careful not to cover your vents.
Both supply and return vents need to be fully exposed to ensure that plenty of air can be circulated throughout your home. While this may take some extra planning to get right, it’s more than worth the effort to help keep your home comfortable.
Think About Body Heat
With a holiday get-together comes the opportunity to spend time with the ones you love. At the same time, these get-togethers bring with them a lot of extra body heat that isn’t typically in your home. With even a half-dozen extra people in your home, the temperature could rise by a few degrees, especially in a smaller home.
Therefore, it’s important to review your HVAC temperature settings to ensure that your system is ready to accommodate your guests. While you probably won’t need to turn on your air conditioner, you may need to drop the heat back a few degrees so that it doesn’t become like a sauna when everyone arrives.
Make Sure Your Breaker Box Is Properly Labeled
Another fun part of the holidays is stringing lights in and around your home. If you’re not careful, though, you could end up overloading a circuit with too many lights, causing the breaker to trip. To ensure that you can successfully turn the circuit back on, it’s important to have each circuit in your breaker box properly labeled.
Beyer Air Conditioning & Heating offers this as an HVAC tip because your HVAC system has circuit breakers in the breaker box, as well. The last thing you want to do is to accidentally switch off the power to your HVAC system when you intended to flip a different switch. If your system is running when you do this, it could cause damage that requires repairs.
Check Your Filter Regularly
While holiday decorations are certainly beautiful, they are usually accompanied by a lot of dust since they’re stored for most of the year. As this dust is released into the air in your home, it will eventually find its way into the filter for your HVAC system.
This sudden dust infusion could overload your filter, which will cause a reduction in your HVAC system’s efficiency. Rather than risk extra wear and tear on your HVAC system, it’s important to check your system’s air filter more often during the holiday season, especially in the week after you put up your holiday decorations.
Schedule Maintenance Early
Even during a year where many plans have changed, the holidays can still become busy quite quickly. To ensure that your HVAC system operates properly throughout the season, it’s a good idea to schedule routine maintenance from Beyer Air Conditioning & Heating before your calendar fills up. This will help you remember to have it done before the truly cold weather sets in during January and February. Plus, it will give you extra peace of mind that your system won’t experience trouble while you have guests at your house.
Test Your Carbon Monoxide Detectors
With heavy furnace use comes an increased risk for a release of carbon monoxide. Although carbon monoxide poisoning symptoms are fairly obvious, it is easy to overlook them until it’s too late. This is especially true when you’re busy making preparations for the holiday season.
To help protect you and your guests this holiday season, it’s vital that you test your carbon monoxide detectors. All carbon monoxide detectors have a test function to ensure that the battery is strong and that the detector itself is in good condition. If any of your detectors fail the test, you can contact Beyer Air Conditioning & Heating to learn about the next steps you need to take.
Save Some Energy
If you’re planning to be out of town to visit family during the holidays, this time away provides a great opportunity for you to save some energy by reducing the amount that your HVAC system operates. To do this, though, you must check your thermostat before you leave to ensure it’s properly programmed to stay at one temperature all the time.
If you don’t have any pets that you’ll be leaving behind, your best bet is to keep the temperature around 56-58 degrees. This is warm enough to prevent damage to your home and cool enough to keep your furnace from kicking on too often. To keep the temperature at this level, make sure it’s set on “hold” instead of on “program.” Otherwise, once your home reaches the set temperature, the normal program that you have in place will take over, resulting in a lot of wasted energy.
Have Your Ducts Inspected
During the holiday season, you’ll want to be sure that every room in your home is receiving the proper amount of conditioned air. To do this, the ducts that carry the conditioned air will need to be clean. To make sure that every guest room is ready to receive guests, it’s a good idea to have your ducts inspected and cleaned by Beyer Air Conditioning & Heating.
The good news is that your ducts only have to be cleaned every few years, meaning that this is a holiday gift that will keep on giving long after you’ve made the investment. Plus, in addition to keeping your home more comfortable, it will also help your system run more efficiently, which will help you save money.
Here for All Your Holiday Comfort Needs
At Beyer Air Conditioning & Heating, we want to help you easily pull off a successful holiday season. Whether you need furnace or air conditioner repair, replacement or maintenance, we have you covered. Our team also offers air duct cleaning, duct repair, ductless system installation, air quality equipment installation and other home-comfort services in San Antonio.
Our customer-first approach to home comfort is what has kept this family-owned company in business for over 40 years, and it’s what allows us to consistently earn five-star customer reviews. For more great tips on how to keep your home comfortable this holiday season, feel free to contact us at Beyer Air Conditioning & Heating today.
