Simple Efficiency Tips for Your Corpus Christi Home This Spring

Spring in South Texas is an enjoyable time of year, but its arrival means the heat and higher utility bills of summer are right around the corner. The mild spring weather gives you the perfect opportunity to make some energy-wise improvements. Use these home efficiency tips before another sizzling summer settles in.

• Schedule A/C maintenance. Taking care of your cooling system’s preventive maintenance now can give you peace of mind that it’s operating properly and efficiently when you start it up for the season. To keep it running at maximum efficiency, inspect the air filter once a month and change it whenever you see signs of dirt.

• Check your attic insulation. Installing adequate insulation on the floor of the attic helps prevent costly heat transfer through the ceilings of your home. Here in the Coastal Bend area, the Department of Energy recommends installing a total of R-49 for the greatest energy savings. Be sure to seal and insulate the attic hatch as well, to stop conditioned air losses from your finished living areas.

• Get your ducts sealed and insulated. Disconnected sections, damage, gaps and leaks in the ducting can cost you up to 30 percent of your A/C’s output. To enjoy lower energy consumption and greater comfort, have any ducting deficiencies corrected, then get the seams and joints sealed with foil-backed tape and the ducts wrapped in R-6 insulation.

• Switch to a programmable thermostat. To improve your A/C’s cooling efficiency, have a programmable thermostat installed and use it to schedule 3 to 5-degree temperature adjustments for at least eight hours a day. For each single-degree temperature increase, you can reduce your energy usage by one percent.

• Have ceiling fans installed. A running ceiling fan creates a cooling wind chill effect that makes moisture on the skin evaporate faster. This boost in comfort can allow you to increase the thermostat temperature setting by about four degrees and cut energy consumption and costs.

For expert help implementing home efficiency tips this spring, contact the HVAC pros at CCAC, Inc. We’ve made the comfort of homeowners in the Corpus Christi area our priority since 1979.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Corpus Christi, Texas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about home efficiency tips  and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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