My mom got me in the habit of cooking regular meals before I even graduated high school and left for college. By the time I moved into the freshman residence halls in undergraduate school, I had a small hot plate and an electric griddle and was making a surprising number of home cooked meals even though it was highly against the rules. In retrospect I get it because they didn’t want a situation where an avoidable fire could start out of nowhere and potentially kill dozens or hundreds of students in the process. And since a roommate during my sophomore year once used my toaster oven when I was away without my consent, I can totally see a situation like this happening when you have these grownup children who never learned how to take care of themselves dealing with lethal appliances. At least I managed to get away from the college campus by the following year and was living in a studio apartment for a number of years. My cooking improved with time, and now I’m constantly in the kitchen from one day to the next. I cook so much food in this house that the fumes collect and leave oil deposits in my HVAC filter. I notice the smell of burnt food whenever I open the filter tray in my air handler and replace the filter with a new one. That’s when I realized I need to better utilize my vent hood above my stove top more, as well as putting a charcoal filter inside to collect some of the cooking odors before they can permeate the rest of my house and the HVAC system along with it.

 

temperature control

My boss moved us back into the office at the beginning of the year.

It was no longer financially viable to keep all employees at home working remotely, as well as the concerns over privacy breaches for client personal information when it’s being handled on unsecure internet connections.

That’s sort of a tradeoff when you move employees out of a central location and into their individual living quarters, wherever they may be within a 100 mile radius of the office. Some people even moved back to their hometowns out of state, hoping that the switch to remote working would remain permanent. Unfortunately, those people were given the option to move back close to the original company headquarters, or they would have to look for work elsewhere. I know that most of the employees stayed, but we had to train a few new ones as well. It has been a tiny bit of an adjustment for me getting used to working at the office again. I loved having access to my fridge throughout my workdays, especially since I keep forgetting things at home after already leaving the house in my car. No matter what, I’ll either leave my coffee in the kitchen or forget to turn the air conditioner back up after having it low while I sleep at night. But now that I have a smart thermostat installed in my house, I can monitor my HVAC system throughout the day while I’m away at work. It doesn’t matter if I don’t get the heat wave warning until after I leave the house, I can still change the temperature whenever I have my phone with me.

local contractor

While I bought this house brand new, it’s already almost a decade and a half old at this point.

I have done what I can to take good care of it, but you can already see the exterior paint fading and chipping in certain areas that are the most exposed to rain and sunlight.

I already replaced my water heater once, but it seems like I should speak with my plumbing company about getting a new one very soon if I run into any leaking issues. That’s why I put a leak detection alarm within the water basin tray at the base of the water heater. If for any reason the base of the water heater starts to rot out and water appears in the tray, the leak detection alarm will notify me immediately with an extremely loud and piercing siren. I try to drain it out yearly and clean the anode rod each time to keep the whole appliance running smoothly for more years than usual. Still, I should start budgeting for a new water heater as soon as possible. It’s right up there on my list with my central HVAC system, which is about to hit the 15 year mark itself. Most heating and cooling companies will tell you to get a new air conditioner after 15 years because it will have lost a lot of its strength and performance compared to day one when it was brand new. The machine could still be running after this lengthy period of time, but it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be running efficiently. In all honesty it could be running inefficiently and costing you more money in the long run. That’s why SEER ratings are important to me because a higher number indicates that the machine can reach the same temperatures while using less energy in the process.

quality heating and air

Despite living in a big city with a lot of options for shopping and businesses, I’m not impressed so far after moving out of the countryside.

Just because I am closer to civilization and have to drive less, it doesn’t mean I am happier or more content.

On the contrary, I feel claustrophobic some days when I can’t escape the road noise from cars rushing by on the highways or the chatter, talking, and yelling at all hours of the day and night. My apartment is full of people around me on both sides, and both above and below me. I have to use fans or play the TV or radio while I sleep just to provide some sort of white noise to drown out the noise coming from neighbors or people on the streets in the city below. Another disadvantage to living in the rural countryside is having a long commute to work each day. Here in the city I can get to the office on a short 10 minute bus ride. However, I enjoyed those commutes when it gave me a chance to look at the surrounding woodlands with my eyes, waking up the morning before work and calming myself down on my way home after work. Back in my previous town, there were only three actual HVAC contractors, and two of them had hordes of negative reviews on the internet. When I got to the big city, I was shocked by the sheer number of heating and cooling companies that I saw when I searched for them on Google. However, my experience with the city HVAC experts hasn’t been much better than the rural ones until a new company recently opened near my apartment. This is the best HVAC supplier I’ve used yet.

air conditioning supplier

I learned a lot of good lessons over the years from the elders in my family.

My grandfather taught me everything I know about cars, starting from an extremely young age.

He let me help him with his oil changes when I was only eight-years-old. I’m glad that my dad encouraged it because he knew the skills would be invaluable to me in the future. He was like my siblings in that he expressed zero interest in learning my grandfather’s auto mechanic skills. Now he realizes that life would have been easier for him had he simply listened to his father all of the times his father attempted to teach him how to do a basic oil change. While I learned how to work with my hands from my grandfather, it was my grandmother that nurtured my love for academics and science in particular. She bought me my first science kit one year and then a telescope another year. I always say to anyone who asks that I got my interest in the natural sciences from my grandmother, the middle school teacher. She taught me about dust and indoor climate control systems. Since an air conditioner filter collects dust, dirt, pollen, sports, and other fine particles, it is your line of defense against airborne lung and sinus irritants. If you want your a/c filters to last longer, you can utilize one or more air purifiers in your house to collect the dust that comes in from outside whenever your front door or back door are opened. I can’t imagine trying to survive with all of these nasty allergens with something as tenacious as chronic asthma.

 

hvac service plan

Recently I bought a product for my HVAC condenser that looks a lot like a giant hairnet, although it works to keep things out instead of containing things within

I never understood the importance of a hair net when I first started working as a dishwasher in high school. I figured that it was only important for people working behind the steam tables in the kitchen, not for the dishroom. Since we were just dealing with flatware, cups, bowls, and plates, I didn’t understand the need for hairnets. That changed one day when I sat down to eat at a restaurant and saw a hair on a “clean” plate that was presented to me moments before the server intended to put my food on it. Thankfully I noticed the hair before he placed the hot and fresh food overtop. After that horrifying experience, I never questioned using hair nets around food again. In fact, I bought a box of them for my kitchen to use during the holidays while I’m cooking in front of guests. I get secondhand embarrassment even if no one cares one bit if I cook without wearing one, and it’s hard to explain this without telling someone the long story from my past. Recently I bought a product for my HVAC condenser that looks a lot like a giant hairnet, although it works to keep things out instead of containing things within. These mesh covers are often nylon woven net material that is designed to breathe and not restrict air flow in any real way while protecting the condenser from fallen leaves, twigs, and yard debris. I have several trees that shed leaves constantly and I find that the mesh covers are extremely effective at protecting the fan and compressor inside.

 

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I had some interesting experiences living on campus my first two years of undergraduate school.

• I feel incredibly lucky that I was placed with the right person, because my roommate Trey and I got along from the start.

We both had similar demeanors, both quiet, and also shared a love for rock and jazz music. Our school’s residence living department gave us extensive surveys to determine the best matches for living situations. They wanted to diminish the possibility of us needing to switch roommates after getting placed initially by the school. I understand completely because this turned out to be a really messy process for every student I know who had to go through switching roommates after an unsuccessful first attempt right out the gate. Sometimes it was as simple as one student enjoying vices like drinking or smoking while the other did not. My roommate and I were both the same in that regard, and we also had very similar dispositions as introverts. However, we definitely had different attitudes with the indoor temperatures. I was amazed when I discovered that we had a room with an adjustable thermostat our freshman year. This wasn’t normal on that campus, and almost a bit of an anomaly from what I heard from other students. We could make it fairly cold inside if we wanted to, but my roommate was too sensitive to the air conditioner being on too low. I had to meet him halfway when I let him use one of my high quality fleece blankets that my mom had sent with me to school as a backup. At least he was warmer at night and I didn’t have to drip in sweat.

furnace/heater tune-up

This is how I get all of my supplies from the hardware store without having to buy everything up front

I learned recently about buy-now, pay-later services. There’s one in particular that allows you to earn points that go on your credit score. After you’ve successfully completed one of their six-week, four-payment purchases, you can apply to be in their credit program. My credit was ruined when I lost my home right out of college and had to float myself along in motel rooms and homeless shelters for a few years. I had to max-out my credit cards and three of them got written-off and are big red blotches on my credit report. But with this new buy-now, pay-later service I have already increased my credit score by 100 points in only 6 months. It’s really convenient now that one of the biggest retail companies in this country is accepting this payment service. I learned how to utilize this service at other businesses that aren’t affiliated. All I have to do is use the buy-now, pay-later service at the major retailer I mentioned and simply purchase gift cards to other stores, restaurants, gas stations, and retailers. This is how I get all of my supplies from the hardware store without having to buy everything up front. I get my special allergen HVAC filters from the hardware store and try to get more than one at a time if I’m putting it on the buy-now, pay-later service. Recently I bought sheets of activated charcoal pre-filter to add to my existing a/c filter. They not only block out dust and lengthen the life of the a/c filter, but they absorb odors too!

 

 

air purification

When I was younger, I enjoyed the changing seasons much more than I do now.

I embraced the cold autumn breezes when they’d cap the final summer afternoons in mid September every year.

I relished the first snowfall, even when it left me shivering at my bus stop in the early morning hours. And just like everyone else, I welcomed and enjoyed the oncoming spring season almost as much as I do now. I get stressed out because the change in seasons poses a challenge to any serious homeowner. There are unspeakable risks to neglecting a proper winterization of your home. What if you allow exposed pipes to reach temperatures below 32 degrees fahrenheit? You could end up with exploded plumbing and extremely expensive water damage. I know some people who live in Texas and were there last year when the power grid went down during that severe week-long ice storm. Those people weren’t ready for weather like that and it tore through Texas in a path of destruction. Last year I made sure to safeguard my midwestern home by sufficiently winterizing it as early as September. Now it’s almost summer and I find myself in a different dilemma—an out of control energy bill from having to run the air conditioner so much. The temperature outside today was 100 degrees, but the heat index almost reached 110 degrees. I know I’m not the only person who sees their energy bill go crazy in the months of June, July, and August every year. At least by September we start to get that mild, pre-autumn weather that I’m always so fond of.

geo heat pump