Bartels Heating & Cooling Blog: Archive for the ‘Air Conditioning’ Category

Mid-March? It’s Time to Think of AC Maintenance

Monday, March 14th, 2022
AC-technician

Next week brings the official end of winter. We know that this doesn’t mean the cold weather will simply stop—the start of spring often brings abrupt cold snaps and surprises. But temperatures are already warming up and starting the climb toward the summer.

For us in the HVAC business, this is the time of year for air conditioning maintenance. We encourage all our customers to arrange for a visit from one of our skilled technicians to tune-up and inspect their air conditioners to ensure they’re ready to go to work when they need to, and that they’ll do the best job through the rest of the year.

You can call us for air conditioning maintenance in Mason, OH. We recommend signing up for our maintenance program, which includes both AC maintenance and heating maintenance, as well as great membership perks like a 15% discount on repairs and priority scheduling. 

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Ways We Can Improve Your HVAC System in Summer

Monday, July 19th, 2021

family-in-homeAlthough you may not list “air conditioner” as one of the great pleasures of the summer, you still connect the two in your mind. You just can’t relax and enjoy the hot months without having the retreat of a comfortably cool home.

If you’re wondering if you can make your AC better, we have some suggestions. We can help your AC provide you with better and more energy-efficient cooling. The right improvements depend on the current situation you have with your AC, but here are some suggestions.

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Heat Gain—And How You Can Slow It Down in Your House This Summer

Monday, June 7th, 2021

sunshineWhat’s the biggest enemy of your indoor comfort during the summer? If you said “heat,” you’re mostly right. But the heat itself is only part of the problem when it comes to maintaining indoor comfort. The heat getting inside your house, which is called heat gain, is a major reason for discomfort and one that often gets overlooked. As long as the temperature inside your home is lower than the temperature outside it, heat will continue to move indoors. This can make it harder for you to stay comfortable, even with a good air conditioning system. 

In this post, we’re going to look at the heat gain problem and the best ways you can slow it down for better and more inexpensive summer cooling. 

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Is a High-Efficiency AC Worth It?

Monday, May 24th, 2021

air-conditioner-on-leavesIf you are thinking of making upgrades for your home’s HVAC in Lebanon, OH before the big summer heat, you’ve probably already considered the option of installing a high-efficiency air conditioning system. (After all, you landed on this page!) High-efficiency ACs are increasingly popular, but homeowners often have second thoughts about installing them because they cost more than standard efficiency ACs. 

A bit of hesitancy when making an upgrade is a good thing: we recommend customers always work with us to help them make the choice that’s best for their home, and the highest-efficiency AC is not always ideal. We can’t give you a definite answer to the question in the title in a blog post because we don’t know your customized cooling requirements. You’ll need to consult with us to find an answer. But we can provide you with some important information about high-efficiency air conditioning systems that will help you start to focus on your needs.

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How Much Cooling Can Your AC Provide?

Wednesday, May 19th, 2021

thermostat-and-woman-72-degreesIf you look at the thermostat settings for your AC, you’ll find the lowest you can set it is 60°F. That’s more cooling than most people are comfortable with. But looking at that setting brings up a question: what is the limit on how much cooling an air conditioner can provide for a home? Is the 60°F limit on the thermostat arbitrary, or is it possible for an AC to make a home even cooler?

We’ll answer these questions, which will help explain how best to set the thermostat to avoid heavily taxing your air conditioning in Mason, OH.

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Time to Schedule AC Maintenance to Prep for Summer

Monday, April 26th, 2021

AC-technician-cleaning-unitThe weather may not be warm enough for you to use your air conditioning in West Chester, OH quite yet, but we’re already into the middle of spring and the summer heat will be here before we know it. Your air conditioning system needs to be ready to handle anything. So… do you know how you can prepare it for anything?

It’s easy! Arrange for professional air conditioning maintenance with the Bartels’ team. You can sign up for our Heating and Cooling Maintenance Plan if you haven’t already, and then schedule a convenient time for one of our technicians to come to your home and give your AC the inspection and tune-up it needs for a great summer.

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Want to Skip AC Repairs This Summer? Schedule AC Maintenance!

Monday, April 12th, 2021

air-conditioner-condenser-3D-renderSpringtime! The weather is already warmer, and you may have even turned on your air conditioning system for a few hours to cool down. That’s great because it means we’re nearing the relaxing days of summer.

Now, how often do you want to schedule air conditioning repair in Fairfield, OH this summer? Yes, that’s a trick question. The answer is zero. Nobody wants to need to repair a major appliance in their home, especially not an air conditioner during the summer heat. 

Now, what if we told you that there’s a secret to avoiding the need for AC repairs this summer? And the next summer? Well, it’s not so much a “secret.” It’s more like something people often forget to do. It’s scheduling air conditioning maintenance with professionals during the spring. 

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How a Faulty Thermostat Can Harm Your Home’s Cooling

Monday, September 14th, 2020

technician-working-on-thermostatAir conditioning systems are complicated machines, so there are numerous ways they can malfunction and lose cooling capacity. Thankfully, they are also durable machines, so most homeowners won’t need to call for air conditioning repair in Cincinnati, OH more often than a few times during their AC’s service life—and most of those will be during the last few years.

But there’s an important part of a home’s cooling that can malfunction that’s outside of the air conditioner: the thermostat. The thermostat is part of the overall HVAC system of a home, and when it develops faults, it can have serious effects on home comfort. It’s easy for a non-professional to misdiagnose a thermostat problem as a different issue with the AC. This is why we recommend you always call HVAC pros when you’ve got issues with your cooling: only skilled technicians can find out what’s actually wrong and fix it.

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Managing AC Temperature in Your Home the Best Way

Monday, August 17th, 2020

setting-the-thermostatYou could call this post “Summer Thermostat Best Practices,” although maybe that sounds a bit too business-like. Just think of this post as your short, simple guide to undo some bad habits many homeowners get into when it comes to setting the thermostat.

Have you ever done this? It’s a hot day, and you feel more flushed and sweaty than usual in your house. You go to the thermostat, notice it can go down to 60°F, and think, “I’ll crank this thing and get the maximum cool air from it,” then drop the thermostat setting to that lowest level. A short time later, it’s gotten too cold in the house, so you move the thermostat back up to where it was.

No shame in admitting if you do this. Now please, don’t do it again. This is not only a way to waste power, but it doesn’t reflect how the thermostat works or how your house becomes hot.

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Signs an AC Compressor Is in Trouble

Monday, August 3rd, 2020

compressor-in-ac-unitIf we could choose one component of an air conditioning system as the most important, it would be the compressor. All parts of an air conditioner are vital for it to operate well, and malfunctions in any of them are a reason to call for air conditioning service in Middletown, OH from our professionals. We’d choose the compressor as the most important because it’s a) the heart of the AC and the reason it can change from a large fan system to a cooling system and b) expensive to replace; it’s usually more cost-effective to replace the entire AC system rather than just the compressor.

Compressor troubles are common reasons for AC failure, so we’ve provided a guide below to the signs you may have a compressor that needs our help. The sooner you move on a suspected problem, the more likely we can rescue the compressor from complete failure.

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