Ways to Determine That Your House Needs Duct Cleaning

January 21st, 2015

A disturbing percentage of homeowners with forced air systems are completely unaware that their ducts need to be cleaned on a semi-regular basis. If you’re asking this question, then you probably already know that your ducts need to be cleaned, but are unsure of when to act on that knowledge. There are a few ways to determine that your house needs duct cleaning. Let’s examine some of those ways together.

You Haven’t Had Your Ducts Cleaned Before

If you have just recently become aware of the need for duct cleaning, but you haven’t had it done yet, get it done as soon as possible. Some pretty frightening things have likely built up in your ducts over the years that they haven’t been cleaned, and you’ll want to get rid of those things as quickly as possible. There’s no point in waiting until a preset time; ducts have no optimal time of year for cleaning, like heating systems do. Just get it done as soon as you can to start reaping the benefits of duct cleaning. Ducts should be cleaned every 1-3 years after the first time.

Frequent Allergy Attacks and/or Illnesses

The primary reason that duct cleaning is necessary is that all the microscopic contaminants that circulate through the air often find a home and a means of transportation in the ducts. Things like dust, pollen, viruses, bacteria, insect dander, and mold are all common pollutants that can be found in the common home’s air ducts. These pollutants are circulated throughout the house whenever the air conditioning or heating is turned on, infecting the occupants of the house in the process. If you are an allergy sufferer, or if you find that you get sick often throughout the year, then you could definitely reap the benefits of having your ducts cleaned out. That’s not to say that duct cleaning will solve all of your health problems, but it can remove a lot of the organisms that contribute to things like the common cold and the flu.

If you haven’t had your ducts cleaned in a while, call Bartels Heating & Cooling to schedule an appointment today. We provide professional duct cleaning services throughout West Chester.

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Can a Furnace Be Damaged by Clogged Filters?

January 13th, 2015

You may know that the filter(s) used along with your HVAC equipment help to eliminate contaminants from the air that you breathe. Forced-air systems would recirculate dirty air if there was not a barrier set in place, but a furnace filter can trap particles like dust and bacteria so that you can feel a little better about the indoor air quality.

If you wait to change a dirty filter for too long, it may affect the quality of the air. But more likely, you’ll notice the effects on your heating system first. A dirty furnace filter restricts airflow to the furnace, leading to higher energy spending, poor heating performance, and even a potential heating breakdown.

Your furnace requires a certain amount of airflow in order to operate properly. When your unit was first installed, technicians made precise measurements to make sure that the heating capacity of the furnace was enough to heat the home completely without using excessive amounts of energy. When not enough airflow can make its way into the furnace to be heated, the unit will consume too much energy in an attempt to get your home to the desired temperature.

But the high energy spending is not necessarily the biggest problem you may face. If your furnace takes longer to meet heating demands, parts can begin to become overworked. Your furnace may break down well before its expected lifespan and you’ll probably notice reduced heating in one or more areas of the house.

If your heating system is already struggling to heat your home, changing the filter may not be enough. While it is possible that the clogged filter contributed to the problems with your HVAC system, it’s also likely that the other parts have begun to break down as well and will require professional service.

Changing the filters every one to three months is a job you can do on your own, but heating repair is best left to professionals. You can also ensure your unit is working properly by scheduling maintenance annually and calling for repairs at the first sign of trouble. We offer professional heating services in the Hamilton area. Call Bartels Heating & Cooling today to schedule an appointment with us.

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Reasons Your Boiler Isn’t Giving You Heat

January 7th, 2015

Boilers are one of the most dependable ways to provide warmth to a home through a long winter. Thanks to their small number of mechanical parts, boilers suffer from a reduced level of wear due to use, and that means an extended lifespan and few repair issues.

Of course, no heating system can work entirely without problems, and a boiler may encounter malfunctions that will lead it to stop providing heat. When your house grows cold because the boiler is no longer working, it requires the assistance of trained HVAC technicians to fix it. You will find quality boiler repair service in Fairfield, OH that will get your house warm once more at Bartels Heating & Cooling. We have 24-hour emergency service for when that troublesome boiler problem cannot wait.

Possible Reasons for a Boilers Not Providing Heat

Please note that these causes of boiler failure are for your information to help you better understand the heating system. Do not attempt to diagnose or fix the problems on your own.

  • Burner won’t ignite: This is the most common cause of a boiler failing to provide heat. If the gas jets on the burner will not ignite, no heat will warm up the water in the tank. The trouble may be due to a failed electronic igniter/pilot light, or perhaps trouble in the gas line. Because of the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning from tampering with a gas main, only call on professionals to find out what is wrong with the burner.
  • Broken circulator pump: This pump is one of the small number of mechanical components required for a boiler to operate. The pump removes the heated water from the tank and sends it to the baseboard heaters and radiators throughout the house. If the pump should break, no hot water will circulate. Repair technicians will need to replace the pump.
  • Failed heating elements: In electrical heat pumps, a pair of heating elements inside the tank is responsible for raising the water temperature. If these elements fail, you will need to call for professionals to replace them before the boiler will provide warmth again.
  • Thermostat malfunction: Sometimes the source of heating system failure can be traced to the thermostat on the wall. A thermostat that loses its connection to the boiler will fail to turn on. You should always check your thermostat first when a heating system isn’t working to make sure that a mistaken setting isn’t responsible. However, if the thermostat problem runs deeper, it will require professionals to fix it.

Make sure you look out for early warning signs that the boiler is having problems, such as difficulty igniting the burner or odd sounds coming from the tank. This will help you know to call for repairs before a full failure occurs. Our technicians at Bartels Heating & Cooling are standing by to deliver boiler repair in Fairfield, OH whenever you need it. Give us a call today.

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How Can a Humidifier Keep You Comfortable and Healthy?

January 4th, 2015

In the summer, you often hear people complain about the relative humidity. The amount of moisture in the air can have a major impact on how comfortable you feel, and this impact is probably most noticeable when humidity levels are high and you feel hot and sticky.

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12 Grapes for 12 Months: An Unusual New Year’s Tradition

January 1st, 2015

Across the world, many cultures have specific traditions to celebrate the transition from the old year to the new. In the U.S. and Canada, we associate New Year’s with the ball in Times Square, kissing at the stroke of midnight, resolutions, and singing “Old Lang Syne.” But for many Spanish-speaking countries, one of the key traditions has to do with eating grapes as fast as possible.

The “twelve grapes” tradition comes from Spain, where it is called las doce uvas de la suerte (“The Twelve Lucky Grapes”). To ensure good luck for the next year, people eat one green grape for each of the upcoming twelve months. However, you cannot just eat the grapes during the first day of the new year any time you feel like it. You must eat the twelve grapes starting at the first stroke of midnight on Nochevieja (“Old Night,” New Year’s Eve) as one year changes to another. And you have to keep eating: with each toll of midnight, you must eat another grape, giving you about twelve seconds to consume all of them. If you can finish all dozen grapes—you can’t still be chewing on them!—before the last bell toll fades, you will have a luck-filled new year.

Where did this tradition come from? No one is certain, although it appears to be more than a century old. One story about the Twelve Lucky Grapes is that a large crop of grapes in 1909 in Alicante, Spain led to the growers seeking out a creative way to eliminate their surplus. But recent research through old newspapers shows that perhaps the tradition goes back almost thirty years earlier to the 1880s, where eating grapes was meant to mock the upper classes who were imitating the French tradition of dining on grapes and drinking champagne on New Year’s Eve.

It can be difficult to consume grapes this fast, and the lucky grapes of New Year’s Eve have seeds in them, making the job even trickier. (Seedless grapes are not common in Spain the way they are over here.) For people to manage eating all the grapes before the last stroke of midnight requires swallowing the seeds as well and only taking a single bite of each grape.

Oh, there is one more twist to the tradition: you have to be wearing red undergarments, and they have to be given to you as a gift. The origins of this part of the tradition are even more mysterious, and it’s anybody’s guess why this started.

Whether you go for the grape challenge or find another way to ring in New Year’s, all of us at Bartels Heating & Cooling hope you have a great start to the year and a, uhm, fruitful 2015.

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The Composition of Snowflakes: Are No Two Alike?

December 25th, 2014

“No two snowflakes are alike.”

This is a statement nearly every schoolchild has heard at least once, either while crafting unique snowflakes with a sheet of folded paper and some scissors or while learning a lesson on the science of snow. While even most scientists don’t quite understand what causes a snowflake to form such complex and beautiful columns and points and branches, one thing is for certain, the composition of snowflakes guarantees that no two will ever be identical.  However, it is possible for two snowflakes to appear to be nearly exactly alike.

A snowflake begins to form when a piece of dust catches water vapor out of the air. Water is created when two hydrogen molecules attach to an oxygen molecule. The two hydrogen molecules are angled from one another in such a way that they form a hexagonal shape when they come together during the freezing process; thus, a snowflake begins as a simple hexagonal shape or as layers of hexagons called diamond dust. The emergent properties that follow from the original hexagon are what differentiate one snowflake from another, as the humidity, the temperature in the air, and many other factors (some of which remain unclear to scientists) allow each snowflake to form in an entirely unique way with a seemingly endless variety of shapes.

However, in 1988, a scientist named Nancy Knight claimed to have located two that were the same while studying snowflakes as part of an atmospheric research project. And it appeared to be so; when put under a microscope, the emergent properties looked nearly identical. But while it is feasible that two snowflakes can appear to be exactly alike on the outside, they are never identical on an atomic level. Deuterium is an atom that appears attached to about one in every 3000 hydrogen molecules in the air. Because there are millions of atoms that make up a snowflake, the random assortment of deuterium in any two snowflakes—even in two that so very closely resemble one another—simply cannot be the same.

Here at Bartels Heating & Cooling, we’d like to remind you to grab a cup of cocoa and relax with your family this holiday, perhaps by crafting some unique snowflake creations of your own. We wish you a very happy holiday season, from our family to yours!

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Why Consider a Dual Fuel Hybrid Heat Pump Installation

December 17th, 2014

There can be a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to any kind of home product or whole-home system. In specific to heat pumps, a common piece of misinformation is that a heat pump won’t work during the winter; this isn’t true. It is true that there can concerns about a heat pump working as it should during very cold weather – those days that are under 32 degrees – but it isn’t true that a heat pump can’t work at all. Additionally, with a hybrid heating system, you can avoid any heating capability issues with your heat pump and very cold weather. First, let’s take a look at why there’s concern around heat pumps during the winter.

It’s Chilly Out There

Air-source heat pumps provide heating by absorbing the available heat in the air, concentrating it and blowing the warm air into your home. As the temperature outside falls, the available heat in the air decreases; this can force your heat pump to work harder, making it less energy efficient and more challenged to meet your heating needs. A great solution to this is the hybrid heating system.

What Is a Hybrid Heating System?

With a hybrid heating system, you get the best of both worlds: a heat pump as the main source of heating (and cooling) your home with a back-up gas furnace. This allows you to have a secondary system to heat your home when the outside air temperature falls below 32 degrees.

How Does a Hybrid System Work?

With a hybrid system, your heat pump is furnished with an outdoor temperature sensor that works in conjunction with a dual-fuel thermostat. A set-point temperature is programmed into the sensor that tells your heating system when to switch from the heat pump to the gas furnace for heating; typically this temperature is a few degrees above the freezing mark. When the outside temperature reaches the set-point temperature, the heating system automatically switches from using the heat pump to heat your home to the back-up gas furnace. There is also a set-point temperature at which the gas furnace will switch back to the heat pump.

Benefits of a Hybrid System

With a hybrid system, you get the benefit of using a heat pump as your main source of heating and cooling. This gives you great energy efficiency, the longer lifespan of a heat pump and the gentle heating and cooling of a heat pump. The back-up heating of the system means you’ll never be cold, even on the chilliest of days.

For quality heating installation of a hybrid heating system in your West Chester home, call Bartels Heating & Cooling today to schedule a service appointment!

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How a Furnace Limit Switch Helps Keep You Safe

December 10th, 2014

Your furnace is manufactured with a number of safety mechanisms to help keep you, your home and your heating system safe. One of these safety mechanisms is the limit switch. The limit switch is part of your blower assembly, but is also part of your overall control system. This is why, should a problem develop with your limit switch, your furnace may experience operational issues. To understand more about the limit switch on your furnace in Hamilton, it’s important to learn what it is and how it works.

What Does a Limit Switch Do?

The limit switch is a device that has two functions: first, it won’t allow the fan to turn on until the air generated inside your furnace is warm enough and second, it acts as a kill switch to the burner should the air temperature around the heat exchanger become too hot. The reason the limit switch can turn off the burner is that when the temperature around the heat exchanger becomes too high, the heat exchanger can crack, allowing the toxic byproducts of combustion into your home.

Common Problems with Limit Switches

Like other components in your heating system, the limit switch can malfunction. The most common sign of a malfunctioning limit switch is the continuous operation of your furnace’s blower. Just as the limit switch won’t allow the fan to turn on until the warm air has reached the right temperature, the limit switch also shuts down when the air cools to a certain temperature. However, when a limit switch starts to go bad, it may not turn off at the end of a cycle; the result is a continuously-running blower.

A second problem is common with a limit switch is that won’t allow the furnace to operate. For example, if the air flow in your system is significantly reduced by a clogged air filter, there won’t be enough air circulating through the system; this can cause the heat exchanger to get too hot. Once the limit switch senses this, it turns off the burner.

It is very important that all the safety mechanisms on your furnace in Hamilton work correctly in order to keep you, your family and your home safe. If you suspect your limit switch may be experiencing problems, call Bartels Heating & Cooling today and schedule an appointment with one of our professional furnace repair and maintenance experts.

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Combustion Furnace Components: Electronic Igniters

December 3rd, 2014

Furnaces have a process by which they ignite; this ensures safety and correct combustion. Older furnaces have a standing pilot light, but today’s furnaces come equipped with an electronic igniter. There are two types of electronic igniters and each works a little differently, as we’ll explain below. If you are experiencing problems getting your furnace to ignite or stay lit after ignition, schedule an appointment with your Bartels Heating & Cooling specialist today for quality furnace services in Hamilton.

Types of Electronic Ignition

The two types of electronic ignition are:

  • Hot Surface Ignition
  • Intermittent Ignition

Hot Surface Ignition

A hot surface igniter is a metal probe that heats up when the thermostat cues the ignition process. When the igniter becomes hot enough (it will glow like a light bulb), the main gas valve opens, allowing the gas to flow. Once the gas comes into contact with the heat from the igniter, the gas ignites and lights the burner.

The most common problem that develops with a hot surface igniter is cracking. The metal heats and cools constantly, causing the metal to expand and contract; eventually, the metal will wear and crack. A cracked igniter can’t heat up properly, so your system will have trouble igniting.

Intermittent Ignition

With an intermittent igniter, gas flows through a small pilot line when the thermostat cues for ignition to begin. Once the gas flows, a small electronic device creates a spark that lights the pilot. A flame sensor checks to see if the pilot is lit and if the flame is viable; once the flame is found to be viable, the main gas valve opens and the pilot lights the burner.

A few things can cause the intermittent ignition to fail: incorrect positioning of the pilot gas pipe, problems with the electrical supply, and issues with the flame sensor.

Why Electronic Igniters?

With a standing pilot light, a small amount of gas has to flow all the time; this is not the case with either type of electronic igniter. This not only saves you energy, it can also be safer.

Ignition problems with your furnace in Hamilton should always be handled by an expert. Having ignition problems with your furnace? Contact us today!

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Will Thanksgiving Turkey Really Make You Sleepy?

November 27th, 2014

We’ve all heard it before: you feel so sleepy after a Thanksgiving meal because of the main event: the turkey. For years, people have credited extraordinary levels of tryptophan in turkey as the reason we all feel the need to nap after the annual feast. But contrary to this popular mythology, tryptophan is probably not he largest responsible party for your post-meal exhaustion.

Tryptophan is an essential amino acid, which means it’s something that our bodies need but do not produce naturally. Your body uses tryptophan to help make vitamin B3 and serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter that sends chemicals to the brain to aid in sleep. But in order to get this essential amino acid, we have to eat foods that contain it.

Turkey has somewhat high levels of tryptophan, but so do many other foods, including eggs, peanuts, chocolate, nuts, bananas, and most other meats and dairy products. In fact, ounce-for-ounce cheddar cheese contains a greater amount of tryptophan than turkey. In order for tryptophan to make you feel sleepy, you would have to consume it in excessive amounts, and serotonin is usually only produced by tryptophan on an empty stomach.

The truth is, overeating is largely responsible for the “food coma” many people describe post-Thanksgiving. It takes a lot of energy for your body to process a large meal, and the average Thanksgiving plate contains about twice as many calories as is recommended for daily consumption. If anything, high levels of fat in the turkey cause sleepiness, as they require a lot of energy for your body to digest. Lots of carbohydrates, alcohol, and probably a bit of stress may also be some of the reasons it feels so satisfying to lay down on the couch after the meal and finally get a little bit of shut-eye.

If you feel the need to indulge in a heaping dose of tryptophan this year, go ahead! Turkey also contains healthy proteins and may even provide a boost for your immune system.

Here at Bartels Heating and Cooling, we hope your Thanksgiving is full of joy and contentment this year. Happy feasting!

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