Kool Breeze of Northwest Florida, Inc Blog: Posts Tagged ‘Fort Walton Beach’

Purchase a New Cooling System Now for Optimal Savings!

Monday, May 22nd, 2017

purchase-cooling-system-now-for-optimal-savingsWith summer not too far off—and with temperatures already soaring—if you’re considering a new Ft. Walton Beach, FL air conditioner installation, now is the time to invest. In fact, for this month only, we are offering a significant rebate on all Rheem systems that we carry—making the urgency of this service even more important.

But what if you really don’t know if your current air conditioner needs replacement? Fortunately, there are a few telltale signs that your air conditioner is getting ready to fail, and if you pay close attention and keep up on your maintenance appointments, you can easily avoid a prematurely broken down cooling system. Keep reading for a few signs that now really is the best time for this purchase.

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Signs It’s Time to Upgrade Your Air Conditioner

Monday, March 13th, 2017

Upgrade-Your-Air-ConditionerTemperatures may be on the cooler side now, but don’t let that fool you! You know as well as we do how fast summer temperatures creep up on us, and how important it is to have an efficiently and effectively performing air conditioner to keep you cool. So how do you know if it’s time to invest in a Fort Walton Beach, FL AC system installation or upgrade?

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A Helpful Thermostat Tip for Saving Money This Summer

Monday, July 6th, 2015

Any summer in Florida is a hot summer. This means keeping the air conditioner in your home running on a regular basis. But does this also have to mean skyrocketing electrical bills? You can expect those bills to increase, but there are ways you can keep them in check. We have some advice for how to set your thermostat during the summer that will keep you cool while at the same time maximizing energy savings.

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Can I Still Run My Air Conditioning System if It Loses Refrigerant?

Monday, June 15th, 2015

One of the more common malfunctions an AC can encounter is a leak that allows its refrigerant to escape. Refrigerant is the heat transference fluid that allows an air conditioner to absorb heat from inside a home, cooling it down and then exhausting the heat to the outside. Your air conditioner has a set level of refrigerant inside it, referred to as the AC’s charge. This level will not lower over the air conditioner’s lifetime… unless it develops a leak.

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3 Ways That a Zone Control System Will Benefit Your Home’s Cooling

Monday, June 1st, 2015

Homes that use central air conditioning hooked up to ductwork are in something of an “all-or-nothing” bind. Each time the AC comes on, every room that has a vent receives conditioned air. Although convenient, it is also wasteful when used on empty rooms. If your house is big enough, there is probably always an unoccupied room or two receiving cooling it doesn’t need when the AC turns on.

But there is a solution to this dilemma: zone control. You can have HVAC professionals install a zone control system into your home that divides up the ventilation network with dampers that can shut off cooling to individual rooms. Through a series of local thermostats and a central thermostat, you can control which areas (or zones) of your home receive cooled air.

3 benefits of a zone control system

  1. Lower utility bills: It is wasteful spending energy to cool down rooms that don’t need it. If you live in a large house or have rooms, such as guest rooms, that are frequently untenanted, having a zone control system that can shut down cooling to unoccupied areas will create significant savings every month.
  2. Individual comfort: It’s hard to find a general temperature for a home that will suit everyone in it, since each person’s comfort needs are different. Zone control allows everyone in a home to manipulate the temperature where they are through local thermostats, which helps keep everyone content.
  3. Even temperature distribution: Sending out cool air to the whole house at once can result in many rooms becoming too cold. However, you can create a program with the thermostats that cools rooms in a sequence that allows for more even temperatures throughout the house. This will create much better comfort levels.

Interested in having zone control installed for your home? Then contact Kool Breeze for service in Fort Walton Beach, FL and throughout Northwest Florida.

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3 Reasons Your Air Conditioning Is Short Cycling

Monday, May 11th, 2015

Short-cycling is a condition that occurs when an air conditioner’s compressor turns on and off rapidly, never completing a full cooling cycling. Short-cycling is extremely damaging for an air conditioner, and it affects comfort in a home and raises energy bills. Because the AC uses a large amount of power to turn on each time, short-cycling places enormous stress on the components and will cause electrical costs to skyrocket. And since the AC will not stay on long enough to distribute sufficient cool air through a house, short-cycling will create hot spots in rooms and general discomfort.

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Are Heat Pumps as Effective at Cooling as a Standard Air Conditioner?

Monday, April 13th, 2015

Heat pumps are a great choice in Florida for year-round residential comfort. One of the reasons they are excellent for our climate is that heat pumps conserve energy when in heating mode while still delivering the right level of warmth for the mild winters. Heat pumps often experience efficiency issues in colder parts of the country, but for Florida they are ideal and can keep a house warm through even our chilliest days.

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Heat Pump Components: The Reversing Valve

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

How do heat pumps manage to provide both air conditioning during the long Florida summer weather and effective heating during the mild winters? A large part of the explanation involves going into the basics of refrigeration and how a standalone air conditioner works. However, the shorter answer is that a component called the reversing valve is what makes a heat pump able to operate as both a heater and an air conditioner.

Because of how critical this component is for the operation of a heat pump, if it malfunctions, a heat pump will end up trapped in one mode or the other. Should you find that your heat pump will not change from heating to cooling mode, or vice versa, then call up Kool Breeze and talk to our repair technicians. They have extensive experience fixing heat pumps in Fort Walton Beach, FL and the surrounding areas, and they will deliver the work necessary to restore your home’s heat pump to full operation once more.

What the reversing valve does

The reversing valve is a valve attached to the refrigerant line that leaves the compressor in the outdoor unit of a heat pump. Inside the valve is a slider; depending on its position, the slide will route the refrigerant leaving the compressor down one set of lines or the other.

When the heat pump is in cooling mode, the position of the reversing valve sends the hot refrigerant from the compressor to the outdoor coils, where it releases heat, cooling the refrigerant. It then travels to the indoor coils, where it absorbs heat and lowers the indoor air temperature.

When the heat pump switches to heating mode, the slider in the reversing valve moves position so that the hot refrigerant leaving the compressor travels first to the indoor coils. It releases its heat, warming the indoor air, then moves to the outdoor coil and absorbs heat before returning to the compressor.

Like any mechanical device, the reversing valve can break down and become stuck in one position. Repairing the problem usually requires replacing the valve entirely, and this is a job you must leave to professionals.

The next time that your heat pump malfunctions and you cannot get it to do both parts of its job, give Kool Breeze a call. We provide comprehensive services for heat pumps in Fort Walton Beach, FL and are ready around the clock whenever you need service.

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Is It Too Late to Schedule Heating Maintenance?

Wednesday, February 25th, 2015

Heating systems, no matter what type, should have a yearly maintenance inspection and tune-up in order to ensure that they will work at their most energy efficient and to reduce the effects of wear and tear from age that can lead to unnecessary repairs or an early replacement. The best time of the year to schedule maintenance for a heater is during the fall, a period when conditions are still warm and the heater is rarely necessary, but close enough to the seasonal change that you can feel confident that the system will go into the colder weather in the ideal condition.

To arrange for heating maintenance in Fort Walton Beach, FL that will see that your heater works at peak efficiency and with as few issues as possible, call Kool Breeze and ask about our regular maintenance program.

Because of Florida’s warm climate through much of the year, heating maintenance is something that is easy to let slip past. If you neglected to schedule heating maintenance for last fall, you might wonder if it is too late to schedule it now or if you should just wait until next fall to have the work done.

The answer to this is that it’s never too late for annual heating maintenance; it is far worse for your heating system to miss a yearly inspection and tune-up than for it to have it a few months late. Heating systems will lose efficiency each year they go without regular maintenance, with an average drop of 5%. Worse, you risk the system experiencing a large malfunction that could lead to a complete breakdown—or even the need to replace the entire system. Although Florida experiences short and mild winters, we still can have unexpectedly cold days strike through the spring, and you don’t want to get caught unprepared with a heating system that will stop working the next time you try to turn it on.

When you sign up for annual maintenance for your heater with Kool Breeze, you’ll receive other benefits as well. Our maintenance program includes a yearly tune-up for your air conditioner in the spring (very important to make it through the hot Florida summers) as well as a 10% discount on non-warranty parts and priority service that lets you skip to the front of the line whenever you call for repair work. Contact us today to find out more about our program for heating maintenance in Fort Walton Beach, FL.

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A Few of the Advantages of Ductless Heating

Friday, January 30th, 2015

Ductless heaters have often been used in areas where any kind of centralized heating is either too expensive or not physically viable. They are favored by apartments and other smaller living areas because they do not rely on ducts, making them only able to heat the rooms in which they are installed. This may seem like a disadvantage when compared to the reach of central forced air systems. However, there are a number of reasons to prefer ductless heating, even in a larger living space. Let’s take a look at a few of the advantages of ductless heating.

Energy Efficiency

Centralized forced air heating systems are actually incredibly inefficient when it comes to transporting heat across the house. Ducts are extremely fragile systems, prone to leaks of all kinds from various causes. This causes a staggering amount of heat to be lost every time the heater turns on. The US Department of Energy has estimated that as much as 30% of a forced air system’s heat is lost to duct leaks every time it’s turned on.

Ductless heating systems don’t have to worry about any of this, because they deliver heat directly into the room. They are also not combustion based systems, which means they don’t have to burn any sort of fuel to create heat. Instead, they siphon thermal energy from the air outside and bring it into the room. This makes ductless heating systems quite a bit cheaper to operate than a lot of other systems.

Versatility

Centralized heating is also not very sensitive to the individual needs of a home’s occupants. Most of the time, a central heating system has two states: on and off. It does not account for varying temperature levels in various rooms, only for the immediate area around the thermostat. This “one size fits all” solution can lead to hot and cold spots throughout the house, as well as wasting energy on rooms that don’t need heating.

Ductless heating systems avoid this problem by only having one room to worry about. If you have a ductless heating system installed in each room, you have the option to not only set a different temperature for each but to only heat the rooms that are occupied at the moment. This saves you quite a bit of money.

If you’d like to know more, call Kool Breeze. We offer professional heating services in the Fort Walton Beach area.

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