Touchstone Heating & Air Inc. Blog: Posts Tagged ‘Fort White’

Pros Vs. Amateurs: A Customer’s Guide

Monday, December 25th, 2023

When you need service for your residential HVAC system, you want to partner with a team of experts. You may have friends or family members with the best intentions offering to help with any HVAC issues at your home, but it’s a bad idea to have anyone work on your heater or air conditioner if they don’t have the proper certifications.

Instead, give our team a call if you’ve been looking for a professional HVAC company in Fort White, FL. We can help you with all of your HVAC problems, big and small. You can keep reading to learn more about the difference that you experience when partnering with a team of HVAC professionals.

Tags: Air Conditioning, Fort White
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Get Ready for the Season Ahead With Heating Maintenance

Monday, October 17th, 2022

It’s October, and even if the weather is still warm, this is when we recommend our customers arrange for their annual heater maintenance in Fort White, FL and throughout North Central Florida. Scheduling maintenance now ensures your system is ready before cold weather arrives, helping to prevent unexpected issues when temperatures drop. Regular annual maintenance also helps avoid the need for furnace replacement, saving you from costly and inconvenient system overhauls. Regular maintenance helps ensure that worn or damaged parts are identified early and can be replaced before they cause major system failures.

Unfortunately, people often forget the importance of heating maintenance in a place that gets as warm as Florida, but with the heating season approaching, this is an important service, as we’ll explain below.

Introduction to Heating Systems

Heating systems are the backbone of home comfort during the colder months, ensuring your family stays warm and cozy when temperatures drop. Whether your home relies on a natural gas furnace, an electric unit, or an oil-powered system, each type of heating system has its own set of features and maintenance needs. Keeping your heating system in top shape is about more than just comfort, it’s about maximizing energy efficiency, reducing energy bills, and avoiding costly repairs down the road.A well-timed furnace tune up can make a world of difference, helping your system deliver optimal performance all season long. Regular maintenance tasks, such as inspecting the heat exchanger for cracks, checking for gas leaks, and cleaning or replacing the air filter, are essential for keeping your heating system running safely and efficiently. These maintenance practices are crucial not only for furnaces, but for your entire hvac system, ensuring reliable comfort and efficiency throughout the year. By staying proactive with your maintenance routine, you can extend the lifespan of your furnace, improve indoor air quality, and ensure your home is ready to handle the demands of winter. In this article, we’ll walk you through the key steps to maintaining your heating system, so you can enjoy reliable heat and peace of mind all season.

Understanding Your Furnace System

To keep your home warm and comfortable during the colder months, it’s important to understand how your furnace system works. At the heart of your heating system are several key components that work together to deliver reliable heat. The combustion chamber is where fuel and air mix and ignite, creating the heat your home needs. This heat is then transferred to the air by the heat exchanger, a critical part that ensures your system operates safely and efficiently.

Once the air is heated, the blower motor pushes it through the ducts and into your living spaces, ensuring even distribution throughout your home. The air filter plays a vital role by trapping dust and debris, preventing them from circulating in your air and potentially clogging up the system. Regular maintenance of these components, such as cleaning or replacing the air filter, inspecting the heat exchanger, and ensuring the blower motor is running smoothly, helps maintain optimal performance and energy efficiency. By understanding these key components and their functions, you can better appreciate the importance of regular maintenance in keeping your furnace system running efficiently and your home comfortable all season long.

Tags: Fort White, Heating System Maintenance
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How Can I Tell When It’s Time for AC Maintenance?

Thursday, January 22nd, 2015

If you’re like most homeowners, you probably don’t think much about the state of your air conditioner until it finally breaks. And once that repair bill is in your hands, you may begin to wonder: is there something I could have done to prevent this? In some cases, common AC issues are easily preventable if you schedule annual maintenance. While AC maintenance doesn’t guarantee that your AC won’t need repairs through the year, it certainly reduces your chances of a major breakdown. Ask yourself the following questions to decide if it’s time for maintenance.

How long has it been since you last had a technician check over your system? You may have looming repair needs that you simply cannot detect just yet, but these can be caught early on with a maintenance visit. Most experts recommend scheduling a visit once a year at least.
How much are you spending on monthly energy bills? Does it seem to have increased over last year’s bills? If so, some minor adjustments may restore some efficiency to the unit.
Can you afford a sudden repair need in the next few months? A maintenance visit is less expensive than most repair calls and may prevent parts from failing throughout the year.
Have you noticed your air conditioner struggling lately? If so, this is a sign you should call for AC repairs instead of maintenance. Making repairs right away is key to keeping the problem from worsening.

The Steps of Maintenance

The maintenance process is thorough enough to target the areas of your unit that can cause the most trouble.

Inspection: First, technicians inspect the entire unit, inside and out. They’ll let you know if anything seems off and tell you if a major repair is necessary so that you can schedule it now before a breakdown.
Adjustment: Any other adjustments are made on the spot, such as straightening bent coils, screwing in loose bolts, and tightening electrical connections.
Cleaning: Finally, the technician will clean the parts of your system that can contribute to inefficiency if dirty, including the inside and outside coils.

At Touchstone Heating and Air Inc. we know how to help you get the most from your air conditioning system year round with complete AC maintenance service in Fort White.

Tags: AC Maintenance, Fort White
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Why Do Heat Pumps Need Refrigerant for Heating?

Thursday, December 18th, 2014

A heat pump is an effective and efficient heating and air conditioning system. In order for any system to provide cool air, it requires a medium to transfer heat out of a space first, usually using a chemical blend called refrigerant. But most heating systems don’t need any refrigerant at all, instead generating heat to heat up the air before it moves into the ducts. So what’s the difference with heat pumps? And why do they still need refrigerant for heating?

When homeowners need installation, repair, or maintenance for heat pumps in Fort White, they know to count on the expertise of the technicians at Touchstone Heating and Air Inc.

Heat Pumps and Refrigerant

We hear it surprisingly often: “Isn’t refrigerant used for cooling and not for heating?” But a heat pump uses refrigerant to pump heat from one area to another, out of the house in the summer and into the house in the colder season.

See, heat pumps are designed much like conventional air conditioning systems. A refrigerant line connects the indoor and outdoor units. The outside unit contains a compressor, while the indoor and outdoor units have a set of coils. In the summer, the indoor coil allows refrigerant to evaporate into a gas and absorb heat while a large fan blows air over the coil. The outside coil allows the refrigerant to condense and give off heat, essentially pumping the heat from one place to another.

In the winter, the heat pump utilizes a component that air conditioners do not have, the reversing valve. A reversing valve allows refrigerant to flow in the opposite direction, absorbing heat from the outside to bring into your house. This can work even in very cold temperatures, which is why heat pumps have become a popular replacement for air conditioning units.

Heat pumps are extremely efficient for heating since refrigerant only has to move heat rather than generate it. This means that if you choose a heat pump for new HVAC installation, you’ll see energy savings in the summer and in the winter.

Contact Touchstone Heating and Air Inc. for your new installation or for any other questions regarding heat pumps in Fort White.

Tags: Fort White, Heat Pumps
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How Problems with Your Thermostat Can Affect Your Air Conditioning

Wednesday, June 12th, 2013

Thermostats are one of the most-overlooked and underestimated components of your home’s air conditioning system. While they are small and almost unnoticeable on your wall, they can have a huge impact on your AC. The Lake City, FL air conditioning professionals at Touchstone Heating & Air have years of experience working with all different kinds of thermostats. We wanted to shed some light on these important pieces of equipment that run your whole AC system.

Thermostats detect the temperature of the air around them and then they activate your AC when that temperature increases to a certain point. They also shut-off your air conditioner once it has cooled your home enough. This is a huge responsibility for your thermostat which means that if they start to have any issues it can negatively impact your AC and your home’s comfort.

Not enough cooling – If your home isn’t getting enough cooling it could be the fault of your thermostats. They might be detecting the wrong temperature in your home and directing your AC to provide insufficient cooling.
AC not turning on – If your air conditioning system isn’t coming at all, it could be the fault of your thermostat. It could be that they are out of battery or it might mean that they need to be replaced.

But there are also a few ways that thermostats can positively impact your home’s air conditioning system.

More control – By upgrading your thermostats to programmable ones you could be able to more accurately control your home’s AC. If can set programmable thermostats to turn your AC off when you leave for work in the morning. You can also set them to come back on 30 minutes before you get home so that your house is always comfortable.

When you need Lake City, FL air conditioning services, just call Touchstone Heating & Air today. We can work with any type of thermostat that you have and we can also help you replace or upgrade your thermostats as well.

Tags: Air Conditioning, Air Conditioning Repair, Fort White, Jacksonville, Newberry, Thermostat
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