It’s a warm, sometimes hot September we’re experiencing this year. It may seem odd to bring up the topic of home heating—not to mention a bit uncomfortable even to think about—but hot weather shouldn’t dissuade you from scheduling an important home heating service: regular professional maintenance.
In fact, warm weather is an ideal time to have this work done, because you won’t need to have the heating system running! You can relax while the HVAC pros take care of inspecting and tuning-up your home heater.
Although we’re approaching the end of the summer, the coming fall is a good time to think about the future of your 
The dog days of summer are here. Although this saying is based on Greek and Roman constellations—when the star pattern Sirius the Dog is on the horizon—most of us think of it as a time when dogs are panting on porches next to people trying to fan themselves off. Of course, if you have a working air conditioning system in your home, you won’t need to be fanning yourself on the porch, and your dog will probably not need to pant so much.
Rattle and whir—an air conditioning system can really turn into a major piece of noise pollution, can’t it? If you dread having to turn on your AC because it sends a racket through your home and disturbs the summer peace, you may have to make a decision about replacing it.
Have you ever stopped to listen to your home’s air conditioning system as it runs? We recommend doing this occasionally, since it can sometimes identify when there’s a malfunction in it (you don’t want to hear grinding or hissing noises, for example). One sound you’ll occasionally hear that isn’t an indication of a problem is dripping water. Your air conditioner doesn’t use water to cool down the air—only special evaporative coolers do that—but water is a byproduct of how it works.
“What, another thing I need to get cleaned regularly?” We know that keeping track of various maintenance tasks for a house can feel daunting, but duct cleaning is actually one that’s easy to have scheduled and completed. You don’t need it done every year, but it’s worth arranging for every 3 to 5 years. So if you’ve never had air duct cleaning done for your home before, you’re probably overdue for it.
We may joke about how during our hot and humid Louisiana summers the air conditioners have to be running nonstop. Of course, there are cooler spells and evenings when ACs power down, and no air conditioner needs to power the compressor constantly to meet a home’s cooling demands. (At least, not if it was correctly sized for the space when it was installed.)
Your air conditioning system works hard on hot days—that’s what it’s there for, after all! But even an air conditioning system can get too hot, causing its motors to trip the circuit breaker to the system. You can reset the breaker, but it’s likely to happen again and again and again. Not an inconvenience you want during the summer!
If you’ve lived through a summer here in Louisiana, you understand that humidity is a serious problem for comfort. Even mild warm days can feel like a blistering 90°F when the relative humidity level is high enough. The reason for this is that the higher moisture levels in the air trap heat inside the body, making it harder for it to release the excess heat through perspiring. Humidity causes other troubles as well: encouraging mold and mildew growth and causing water damage to surfaces.
If you looked up the word refrigerant in a dictionary, you’d probably come across a definition like this:
