10 Air Conditioning Rules You Should Never Break

Your air conditioner is important for making sure that your home feels as comfortable as possible during the hot season. However, that importance means that you should treat it with a degree of respect. After all, if you do something wrong, that is going to have a direct impact on your enjoyment of your summer, whether because of higher power bills or a loss of air conditioning altogether.

If you want the best results from your air conditioner, you should make sure to never break these 10 air conditioning rules:

1. You need to choose an air conditioner with the right cooling capacity for your home, which means taking your square footage, your insulation, and other relevant factors into consideration. As a result, this can be a complicated and time-consuming process, which is why you should not hesitate to seek help from your contractor. Please note that an oversized air conditioner is not a solution because it will cause uncomfortable dips in temperature while making inefficient use of power, much as how an undersized air conditioner will use enormous amounts of power by being on all the time.

2.  Always make sure that your air conditioner is placed correctly even if that looks ugly. For example, your air conditioner should be in a shaded location because that will enable it to run better without being heated by the sun all of the time. Similarly, you should make sure that the back of a window-mounted air conditioner has unobstructed ventilation so that it can vent the heat generated by its cooling in a proper manner.

3. You should not let your air conditioner run all the time because that consumes electricity without producing a corresponding benefit. For example, if you are going to be out most of the day, you have no reason to leave your air conditioner on. Similarly, if you are going to sleep, shut off your air conditioner for the night because you should be able to tolerate higher temperatures while you are asleep.

4. With that said, you should not leave your air conditioner turned off all of the time because that could encourage problems to develop in its internals, with a mold infestation being a perfect example of a potential occurrence. Make sure to turn your air conditioner on by using a WiFi thermostat if necessary for a few minutes each day to keep it ready for use.

5. There is no point to turning your thermostat to a temperature that is lower than what you actually want. After all, it will not get your air conditioner to cool your home any faster. Instead, it will just cool your home to that point by using the same amount of time as usual before proceeding past it in order to reach the specified temperature. Even worse, even a small difference in degrees can mean a big difference on your power bill over the course of a month, meaning that your hastiness could end up costing you a lot more than what you would have expected.

6. Air conditioners and ceiling fans are not mutually exclusive systems. Instead, they are actually complementary since they can combine to produce better cooling than what either one can manage on its own. For example, a ceiling fan can make an air conditioner run in a smoother manner by circulating the air in a room, which in turn, means a longer-lasting air conditioner since it is accumulating less wear and tear from suffering less train. Better still, a ceiling fan has a wind effect that makes you feel cooler than you actually are, meaning that you can make do with a higher temperature on your thermostat, which in turn, means a smaller power bill at the end of the month.

7. Like other machines, air conditioners need regular care and maintenance to continue performing their best. As a result, you should never forget to either change or clean their air filters on a regular basis, which can vary depending on the exact air conditioner that is seeing use in your home. A dirty air filter is not just detrimental to your air quality but can also cause freezing within your air conditioner by making its processes that much less efficient.

8. Your doors and windows are some of the biggest vulnerabilities in the insulation of your home. In effect, this means that if you choose to leave either one open while your air conditioner is running, you are letting in heat that will force your air conditioner to work even harder in order to make up the difference, which means an earlier breakdown as well as a bigger power bill at the end of each month. Summed up, this means that you should never keep either your doors or your windows open while you are letting your air condition run.

9. Always make sure that your air conditioner gets an inspection from a professional at the end of each year. This make sure that potential issues building up in your air conditioner can be caught and corrected as soon as possible instead of being permitted to have a detrimental effect on its performance, which can culminate in a full breakdown if problems are never looked at. In contrast, missing inspections can lead to your air conditioner breaking down when it starts seeing more use, which in turn, means a longer wait for the right professional to come in with the right solution because a lot of people will be having similar problems in summer, which is the height of air conditioning use.

10. If you notice something wrong with your air conditioner, whether in the form of a strange noise or a faster-than-normal cooling cycle, you should get someone to take a look at it as soon as possible. After all, air conditioners are like any other machine out there, meaning that existing damage tends to speed up the rate at which they deteriorate. As a result, if you don’t get the problem fixed, you run the risk of incurring a bigger repair bill than what you would have had to pay if you had acted sooner, assuming that it can be fixed at all.