The HVAC Heros

I’m actually looking forward to the summer this year.

That’s not something that I usually feel. Normally, as we move into March, I’m sad that the perfect weather of winter is ending. I love the weather here in the winter and the heat pump doesn’t get much work since the temperatures are so totally mild. But with the coming spring also comes the dread of summer because of all the heat and humidity. The level of heat in this region can be overwhelming even when you have great residential HVAC like we do. I’m very proud to have a great house and superior quality heating and air from a great heat pump. But I’m also a bit of an outsider in my own home because I like more cooling than the rest of the family during the worst of the heat. Yet, my wife is a thermostat hawk for two reasons. She’s skinny and has a higher tolerance to heat. And she hates spending too much money on cooling comfort from the heat pump. I’m just shy of being a fat guy who loves as much air conditioning as he can get. This summer, that’s going to be a reality and not because I’m now living elsewhere. But I do have my own spot inside the house where I can crank the air conditioning if I want to. I had a ductless heat pump installed in the garage. This HVAC technology is very efficient and so I’m not breaking the house rules on saving on air conditioning costs. And since it’s the garage and I’m the only one out there, I’ll be loving life this summer I do believe.

New heating and cooling information

Yet, this house had the latest in residential HVAC and all the HVAC technology that makes living in the south comfortable

It really did come down to the wire before we finally made the decision to relocate to the south. My wife and I started a business more than 20 years ago. We were born and raised in a region of the north that had a gas furnace or a boiler going for the better part of five months each winter. Still, it’s all we knew and we were utterly focused on making our company a success. We achieved that aim and ended up selling the company for a staggering amount of money. The sort of money that meant we were done working at 45. Since we didn’t have children and our work had been our shared passion, we were at a loss initially once we sold the business. We knew for sure that we wanted more space so we upgraded the heating and cooling equipment to get the best price. But the house sold so quickly that we weren’t really sure what to do next. We had always wanted to ditch the winter and the gas furnace for the sun and a heat pump. So we figured that we’d just go ahead and do that. Once we packed up and pared down when it came to our belongings, we bade farewell to the only region we knew. Initially, we rented a really nice house that allowed us to explore more permanent options. Yet, this house had the latest in residential HVAC and all the HVAC technology that makes living in the south comfortable. The summer is no joke down here and we were glad to experience our first one with the best air conditioning we could have asked for.

smart thermostat

My parents died fairly young. Both of them went within two years of each other. And both of them succumbed to a disease that was at least mercifully quick. However, my parents loved my wife and I’m glad that she was around to know them. It’s not that way with her parents. The first time I met them, they were more frigid toward me than a thermostat setting in the 60s. And it really hasn’t changed much over the years. I was just not what they wanted for their daughter. I was from the south and we ended up settling here after we were married. This took their daughter further away. I was also not rich and of the wrong political persuasion as well. Still, we lived comfortably inside the central air conditioning of a nice 3 bedroom home. One of the bedrooms is my office and I added a ductless heat pump in there. But as the years went by, it became more and more clear that the in-laws wanted to move to be closer to us. I did my part by finding them just the right place. It was a nice condo on a golf course and all it needed was to have the HVAC equipment replaced. They bought it and prior to them moving in, I had the HVAC company replace the residential HVAC. But the ductwork was no good and would have to be replaced. That’s when I thought about the ductless heat pump in my office. The HVAC professionals ended up going with a ductless multi split system. And believe it or not, my in-laws are super happy with the ductless heat pumps.

hvac maintenance

My kids and husband know better than to just dump their stuff simply anywhere.

They all know the response this elicits from me.

And we all want to avoid getting me going about the order and cleanliness of the house. I’m lucky to live in such a nice place with such great quality heating and air and so many conveniences. However, I’ve been a total clean freak since I was a little girl. I think this cleaning thing was a bit of a coping mechanism. I grew up in a house that had more than its fair share of turmoil and drama. That was something that really affected me in a negative way. I always felt a bit out of control when things were tense and ugly in my mom’s home. So I would clean. This seemed to take my mind off of all the negativity inside the central air conditioning of that house. Over the years, I simply turned into a person who must have a clean, well organized environment. That goes for my office as well as inside the air conditioning of my own home. So no, the kids know that everything has its place and we all clean up after ourselves as well as pitch in on weekly cleaning duties. It was during a brief break during one of those weekly cleanings that the air duct for the HVAC caught my eye. I could see that it was dirty. Upon further inspection, I was horrified to see there was some serious filthy behind that air duct vent. That’s when I discovered that ductwork cleaning and ductwork resealing were a thing. And let me tell you, ductwork cleaning is now an annual event.

 

 

a/c set up

It’s so nice to be deeply in love with my home once again.

My wife and I had both fallen madly in love with that house the first time we saw it.

After months of looking to be a homeowner, we stumbled across this place. And I mean literally. My wife was pregnant but we still got out of the air conditioning in the evening for a walk. The more pregnant she got, the more she needed flatter terrain to walk. This eventually led me to scout out spots we could drive to since our apartment was in a hilly part of town. On one of our journeys outside of the not so great central air conditioning of our apartment, I literally tripped over the for sale sign on this house. Had I not, we might have walked right by it as it was a bit worn down. Yet, we called and the realtor took us inside. It was love at first sight. However, due to poor indoor air quality that was made worse when the heat pump kicked on, the honeymoon was short. Before long, we were both not at all pleased with the smell inside our house. Once the baby was born, we had to address the smells because we had an additional source of odors in a crib. The HVAC company had the sort of HVAC professionals who would come to our rescue as though they were couples counselors. They helped us fall madly in love with our home once again by transforming the home with air purification. The whole home air purification system now produces the best indoor air quality with nothing but fresh scents and clean air.

air conditioner

We were so excited to not be traveling up north for Christmas this year. I had always sort of resented leaving a perfectly mild winter for a region that requires a gas furnace for heating. Shoot, at home, we barely even need any heating at all from the heat pump during our winter. Like, we can generally get by with having the space heater on for an hour on a cold morning. So I hated having to pack up and head a thousand miles north to freeze for a week. Last year about this time, my wife and I decided that since the kids were older now, it made more sense to stay home during the holidays. I was thrilled to stay in the land of the heat pump all winter. But that also came with the fact that my wife’s parents would be coming to stay with us for like two weeks. That’s a lot of time with the in-laws. On top of that, I wasn’t all that thrilled about the fact that they have very different heating needs. Even though it’s in the single digits during Christmas up there, I would sweat inside their home because the gas furnace cranked always. I decided to get ahead of that before my wife’s folks visited. This visit gave me the excuse to tweak the existing HVAC equipment to provide zone controlled HVAC throughout the house. So when they arrived, my in-laws had their own thermostat for their room. They could do the sort of heating they needed as long as it was in the guest area. We actually had the best Christmas that I can remember and I think the in-laws loved the zone controlled HVAC.

cooling products

Taking on a custom home build project is one of the more challenging things I’ve done in my life.

I’m just really glad that I waited until I was retired before I took on that effort.

There is no way I could have been on top of all the details of a custom home build while still sitting inside the commercial HVAC of the office all day. Talk about fractured focus. I would have not done justice to either my new home or my work. So I’m thankful that I hung it up when it came to the zone controlled HVAC of the office prior to building this house. I’m also glad that I had the time to really be involved in who exactly was building my home. My wife and I were glad to have the sort of general contractor who invited our input and vetting of subcontractors. For the most part, we went with his preferred folks like electricians, plumbers and the like. But when it came to the heating and cooling of our new home, we wanted to pick our own HVAC contractor. Having the best quality heating and air in our new place was a high priority for the two of us. We’d lived with sort of mediocre residential HVAC for a long time in our old place. So this time, we were heavily prioritizing the heating and cooling in our new, custom designed home. And it took us a couple of months before we found just the HVAC contractor we were looking for. It was worth the wait and the effort. This HVAC professional was passionate about heating and cooling and it showed. We now have the sort of quality heating and air that we had really only dreamed of living with.

 

website information

Being at the corporate offices and inside the zone controlled HVAC there was like the finish line for me in a lot of ways. I worked for the same company for nearly 15 years before getting to the spot with near perfect commercial HVAC. So leaving it was not at all what I wanted to do. In fact, I had moved so much over all the years I worked for the company, I was ready to put down roots. And it was sort of understood that I’d finally be able to buy a house and be done with moving. That’s the way I approached it when I bought my home and had the HVAC equipment replaced along with other renovations. Before the house was even complete, I met the woman who would become my wife as she was a native of the area. It all looked as though it was all going to plan. I would have a lovely place to live with just about the best quality heating and air money could buy. It sure beats living in all those apartments and condos while being on the move for the company. But once the pandemic happened, things changed. The company definitely took it in the teeth over the first 18 months of the pandemic. We were all working from home with our own air conditioning for much of that time. Once we were back in the office, I was called into the big bosses right away. They wanted me to move north to save a regional office that was failing. It wasn’t so much a request as it was a demand. But man, I struggled so hard trying to tell my wife that her future would have a gas furnace in it.

 

 

cooling specialist

I really like that my kids are older. When my wife and I first bought this house, we had a family to raise in mind. That’s why we went with the bigger house even though it needed more work. Having the space to raise our kids was more important than having the latest in residential HVAC or the perfect kitchen. That’s because we were planning on having three kids and spacing them out about a year or a bit more apart. So while good quality heating and air was important, the space was more valuable for us at the time. But we did end up getting the sort of HVAC equipment we wanted once the HVAC unit we inherited was done. Now that the kids are older, we are finding that we have a great time together as a family. I mean like a legitimately good time. So many of my friends just complain about how nobody gets along. That’s not the case for us. In fact, we love being able to be spontaneous quite often and just hit the road for adventure. We have an SUV that basically has zone controlled HVAC so everyone is comfortable with the air conditioning setting. And then, we pick a spot we want to see and see what happens from there. On a recent trip, we made an air conditioning discovery that will inform the rest of our trips. We ended up staying in a roadside hotel that had some old school heating and cooling equipment. These rooms had that big wall unit air conditioner that you just don’t see all that often anymore. Man, those things were so great. The room was cooled down in just minutes once we turned the air conditioning on.

heating business

Without being able to adjust the air conditioning the way that I wanted it, I knew that I was going to wake up sweating

For some reason, the air conditioning kept turning off in the hotel room that we were staying in the other night. It was so annoying! I always set the air conditioning really low whenever we are staying in hotel rooms. That’s because I think that it gets so hot and stuffy inside of hotel rooms while we are asleep. Maybe that’s because there are always 4 or 5 of us in the hotel room at the same time. My husband and I always travel with our three kids. I would normally blame one of the kids for breaking the air conditioning, but that’s not what happened this time. This time, the kids were all super tired and all three of them went right to sleep. I decided to go on and set the thermostat at 65 the way that I normally do, but the thing just wouldn’t stop turning itself off. I don’t know what in the world was going on with the A/C system, unless it was doing it on purpose! That’s when I got the awful idea that maybe they had settings built right into the thermostat and you couldn’t actually adjust them to be warmer or cooler. I was pretty upset about that because the nice cold air that I get in the room at the hotel is one of the main reasons that I ever want to stay in a hotel in the first place. Without being able to adjust the air conditioning the way that I wanted it, I knew that I was going to wake up sweating. I’m always hot these days. I called the front desk to see if there was some way to override the system, but they said that there wasn’t.

furnace/heater