At your breaker panel, you should see all the switches are turned in the same direction. They are all very uniformly in line with each other so it is very easy to tell when one is not pointed in the same direction. If you see a switch that is not going in the same direction or somehow looks differently than the rest, it has tripped or turned off. Sometimes a tripped breaker will have a loose feeling.
To reset the breaker that has tripped you’re going to turn it to the off position then you’ll feel it kind of click. Then you reset it by turning it back on. a
Why Your Breaker May Have Tripped
Your breaker is a safety device so it usually does not trip for no reason. There are a couple of reason why your breaker may have tripped where it would be fine to reset it yourself. For example, you might have had a power outage where your lights flicker off and come right back on while your air conditioner was running. That could cause a breaker to trip. Also, your air conditioner could have short cycled due to someone turning down the thermostat at the same time that the air conditioner was coming on. In strange cases such as the ones described above, it will help you to know how to reset your own tripped breaker to get your air conditioner working again.
How Many Times Should You Reset The Breaker?
You should never tolerate a breaker tripping repeatedly. If your breaker trips more than once we recommend not continuing to reset it. The breaker is a safety device so we recommend having a professional come to investigate what could be causing the breaker to trip and how to fix any problem with your heating and air conditioning system.
If your air conditioner is cooling, but not cooling very well or enough, you want to check two simple things before calling anyone to fix your air conditioner.
The first thing to check is your furnace air filter.
A dirty air filter can restrict air flow and cause your air conditioner to not cool well.
The second thing to check is the outdoor coil to make sure it is not dirty with dust, or dirt and debris from nearby trees and bushes.
If the outdoor coil is clogged with dirt and debris, this can cause the air conditioner to not cool enough. If you find that your outdoor condensing coil is clogged, you could try to clean yourself. It should be cleaned from the inside out.
However we always recommend calling a professional if you are not trained to work on air conditioners. It is possible to wash out an air conditioner in a way that can damage some of the components. The furnace air filter is very easy to change yourself. A clogged filter often cause air conditioners to not cool enough especially in very hot seasons.
A SEER Rating stands for Seasonal
Energy Efficiency Rating. This rating is made by the regulating
authorities taking all the air conditioners out for a test drive. They
have evaluated the air conditioners for efficiency based on how they
cycle on and off. The SEER Rating is a number that is often overlooked
by homeowners, however it can actually be quite useful.
How Can You Use a SEER Rating?
If you know your Air Conditioner’s SEER rating, you can use it to
calculate how much you spend on electricity for your air conditioner.
In order to do this calculation we need to know a few other numbers.
The capacity of your air conditioner.
Your air conditioner’s SEER Rating
The number of hours of electricity you pay for during the month
Below is the calculation used in the video below to determine electricity costs:
1. Capacity (Tons x 12,000 BTUs)
divided by SEER rating
= Watts
2. Watts divided by 1,000 = KW
3. Kilowatts x Hours of Use = Total kw hours
4. Total kw hours x electricity cost kw hour ($0.12-$0.15)
= Total $$$ to run A/C for the Summer
If after you do this calculation and the total amount is lower than
you typically pay, it is probable you are losing efficiency in your air
conditioner. If your air conditioner has lost efficiency it is actually
operating at a lower SEER rating than what it should be.
What Would Cause Your Air Conditioner to Operate at a Lower Efficiency Rating?
Dirt and airflow are the biggest culprits in air conditioner
efficiency. Dirt both indoors and outdoors can cause problems for your
air conditioner’s efficiency if it is not properly maintained. If the
outdoor coil is dirty the heat transfer capability goes down. When the
aluminum fins on the outdoor unit lose their shine they are not as
efficient and don’t transfer heat as efficiently as it did in the past.
Dirt also causes wear and tear forcing motors to work more overtime
than they did originally.
That’s why after having them professionally cleaned using the proper coil cleaners the heat transfer capabilities will improve.
What Is The Minimum SEER Ratings For New Systems?
It is possible you live in a house with a 10 SEER air conditioner,
but the new minimum SEER rating is a 13 SEER. This will sometimes
depend on where you live, but in our area of Johnson County, KS the
minimum will typically be a 13 or 14 SEER.
What SEER Rating Should I Get? (What Is The Difference Between a 14 SEER And a 16 SEER Air Conditioner?)
If you are in the market for an air
conditioner the question may come up on what SEER rating should you
get. There is a difference in upfront costs. A higher SEER rating on
an air conditioner will cause the price to increase. However, from our
perspective, the increase in upfront cost will rarely be worth it if you
are buying thinking a higher SEER rating will save you more in
electricity. It will save on electricity, but only a small amount.
HOWEVER, the higher SEER ratings on
air conditioners also correspond with other features that are valuable.
Often, a 16 SEER air conditioner will have a two speed compressor that
allows for benefits as far as how your home feels, the humidity control,
etc. The other features on the 16 SEER in relation to the 14 SEER is
what we find to be the biggest difference over the efficiency rating.
The quantum leap in efficiency is getting rid of that 10 SEER air conditioner and putting in even the most basic of air conditioners today such as the 13 SEER.
As a life-long allergy sufferer, he is allergic to pollen, ragweed, animal dander, you name it. However he always says that when he is home, he doesn’t feel like he has allergies. “Growing up I was a mess. But now I can open my windows in my house, and because of the filtration that I have in my system, it’s actually helping clean the air out constantly, so that that’s where it really helps and I don’t suffer.”
Allergy Sufferers Keep Their Homes Closed Up
Homeowners, especially if they have allergies, are reluctant to open their windows. Therefore they are going from heat to air conditioning immediately because they they just cannot handle opening the windows because the suffering is not worth the economic savings that they’ll get by opening the windows and not running the air.
This is a good call because that is exactly what the Mayo Clinic recommends if you have allergies. Here is the list of recommendations from the Mayo Clinic to combat the allergy season:
Use a portable high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter in your bedroom.
Clean floors often with a vacuum cleaner that has a HEPA filter.
If you keep your house closed up and do not have a high efficiency filtration system or UV sterilization system, it is like breathing in a bubble. Homes are built so tight we are all just sharing the same air over and over again and that would be the equivalent of me blowing up a balloon and then having somebody else breathe what’s in the balloon. We’re doing it every day in our homes. Gross. Let’s freshen up that air.
What Does An HVAC Professional Use In His Own House to Combat Allergies?
Two things. One is a UV (Ultraviolet Light) Sterilization System.
The UV Sterilization System has two bulbs in it that produce two different types of UVC rays, which are used for killing germs and bacteria and viruses. This is the same type of light they are using at hospitals where they wheel it into a hospital room and shine UVC rays on the surfaces of the room that could potentially have bacteria. The UVC Light is there to kill bacteria and viruses.
There is a seperate bulb inside the chamber that produces UVB rays which helps to take care of all of the chemicals that we have in our homes. So many items in our homes off gas chemicals and we breathe them. Think of anything in your home that has a smell: Glade plugins, candles, aerosols, detergents, beaches, even the paint on your walls and the glues in the carpet have chemicals in them and we breathe in those chemicals potentially triggering allergies and illnesses.
Second is a Micro Power Guard Air Filtration System
The Micro Power Guard takes care of the particles floating around our homes. There are particulates in the air such as dust, pollen, animal dander, smoke, etc. that regular air filters don’t do a great job at removing. Regular disposable air filters will catch the bowling ball-sized particles but will leave the finer particles that can effect your allergies.
How the Micro Power Guard is so efficient is because it has an electronic polarized media. It uses the electricity to polarize or magnetize itself and turns it into a magnet for particles and it does it through a carbon insert. It uses electricity to pull the small the small fine particles towards it so that it definitely doesn’t get through for you to breathe.
We’ve been putting these in four years now and they work better than anything else we’ve used. They’re amazing.
They’re safe and reliable too. Our Micro Power Guards have a lifetime warranty.
True Story: The only time we had a Micro Power Guard fail was when a customer submerged it in the bathtub in order to clean it. Other than that, they’ll work forever.
Air Envy?
Yes. It’s a thing. We’ve actually had cases of air envy where where one homeowner says, I don’t know what you did next door, but I want air like his. Whatever you did over there. That’s what I want.
Once you experience clean air you will notice when it is not there in other homes or buildings. Matt doesn’t notice two cats in his house and he’s allergic to cats. Matt said “I’ve had I’ve had friends over for hours and later said ‘you have cats?’ and I say actually we have two of them and I’m badly allergic to cats. They cannot believe they didn’t notice when they came into my home.”
UV Sterilization System and Micro Power Guard Help With More Than Just Allergies
In a study done by Environmental Health and Engineering, Inc.* researchers set out to measure the potential exposure benefits of whole house high efficiency in-duct air cleaners. The study focused on sensitive subpopulations such as those who have asthma or severe allergies. The results indicated that the use of high efficiency in-duct air cleaners provide an effective means of controlling allergen levels not only in a single room, like a portable air cleaner, but the whole house.
The National Environmental Education and Training Foundation recommends the use of portable air cleaners in bedrooms of asthmatics. While the use of portable air cleaners in the bedroom did prove to be beneficial in the study, the researchers found that in reality, the use of high efficiency in-duct air cleaners provide a more effective means of controlling allergen levels and the influenza virus not only in a single room, but the whole house.
Perhaps the most interesting result from the study…
Involves the estimation of the risk of influenza infection from an individual who remains in the home over the course of a five-day infectious period with someone who currently has the illness. Since influenza can trigger asthma, the researchers were interested in the effect of high efficiency filters on the transmission of the illness.
The study assumed that the infectious individual spent one-half of their time in the bedroom and the other half in the family room, while a healthy individual spent 69% of the corresponding time indoors at the home during which they were exposed to the house-wide average concentration of quanta in air. For this scenario, the risk of infection by influenza was greater than 30% in the ventilation configuration with a portable air cleaner in both of the two rooms frequented by the infectious individual. In comparison, the risk of infection was less than 4% for the high efficiency in-duct system.
The “high efficiency air cleaner” used in this study was a high efficiency electrostatic air cleaner with HEPA-like removal efficiency for aerosols. One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning has this product for your home as well as more options that add even more protection for the health of your indoor air.
