Don’t be a BigFoot - Reduce your carbon footprint

It doesn’t matter if you are leading the charge against global warming or just a homeowner looking for ways to save a few dollars on energy costs, we can all benefit from reducing our carbon footprint.

Your carbon footprint is basically how much carbon dioxide (CO2) you produce from your lifestyle. Factors include how much you drive, heating and cooling your home, trash you produce and so forth. Some of these items are unavoidable if we actually want to be able to survive, but there are many things we can do to reduce our footprints. Most of the time, it doesn’t take a lot of effort or money, but they do have a big impact.

Lets take light bulbs for example. There are approximately 125 million houses in the United States (source – Google). If every home changed one light bulb that is on for 2 hours a day from a 100watt bulb to a 26watt CFL that would be over 18 billion watts of energy saved. At a conservative average of 10 cents per kilowatt that is about $1.8 million in savings. Unfortunately all that money doesn’t come directly to you but hopefully you can see how a small item like changing 1 light bulb can have a large impact. To look at it another way, that would be about the equivalent of removing 2,700 cars from the road. Other items like driving less, recycling, adjusting your thermostat and more can all be simple little things we do but when done as a whole country can have a huge impact.

Want to know how much green house gas your car produces in a year? Air King has a calculator that will let you know as well as many other helpful tips to reduce your carbon footprint at http://www.airkinglimited.com/page/climate-change.html.

Control at the tip of your fingers – Use a programmable thermostat

For most people in the United States we have our routines down. Wake-up around the same time everyday of the workweek, leave around the same time and come home around the same time. Having routines can be a good thing, especially when it comes to heating and cooling your home. It doesn’t make much sense to heat or cool your home when it is empty while you are at work.

Almost all homes have a thermostat that controls when the heater or air conditioner comes on. A lot of these thermostats are manual thermostats meaning that the homeowner needs to physically turn them up or down to the setting they desire. These work fine, but it requires the homeowner to remember to set it. A programmable thermostat simplifies the process and can pay for itself over the course of it’s life. With a programmable thermostat you can set the desired temperature and time frames. For instance, if you leave at 7:30am everyday, you can set the thermostat up or down 10 degrees at 7:30am and maintain that level until you return. Set it once and it automatically takes care of it until your schedule changes. Just think, if you are away from your home 8 hours a day that is 33% of the day. That can translate into a lot of energy and cost savings if you are not heating or cooling the empty space.

There are a lot of options when it comes to a programmable thermostat including ones you can even sync with a smartphone. A homeowner with some wiring knowledge can typically install programmable thermostats but Air King recommends you consult a HVAC professional. To learn more about other helpful cost saving tips visit the climate change section at www.airkinglimited.com.

Duct, Duct, Duct, Insulate - Insulating Your Ductwork

Have you ever taken a shower and the mirror starts to fog up? For almost all of us, we have experienced this at least one time in our life, probably more often than not. You might open a window, wipe it down with a towel, or think to yourself that you need a better exhaust fan (Air King can help with that!). What a lot of people don’t think about is that same steam that is causing your mirror to fog over is also going through your ducting. This presents a prime opportunity for condensation to form within your ducting. Condensation in the ducting forms when the hot steam from the shower passes through the cooler ducting, causing the steam (water vapor) to turn into a liquid form (water). This is especially true in cooler climates of the country. A very simple fix is to use insulated ducting as well as placing insulation around and on top of the actual exhaust fan (Make sure to check the rating of your exhaust fan as to how much insulation can be placed on top of it. Generally fans are rated for at least an R40 factor). By using insulated ducting it does not allow the air flowing through it to cool fast enough to cause condensation.

What is the big deal with condensation? Condensation can be harmful in many ways. Anytime you have sitting water, the potential for mold and bacteria growth exists, so you are working against one of the main reasons you have an exhaust fan in the first place. Another issue is depending on the situation you could cause enough condensation to form that it starts to drip out of your fan and possibly cause damage to the ceiling material around the fan.

Air King, as well as the Home Ventilation Institute and ENERGY STAR® all strongly recommend that insulated ducting be used with all exhaust fans, so take a minute and check to see if your fan’s ducting is insulated or not. Your fan’s ducting will thank you!

Want to learn more? Take a look at our other topics or click on the “Learning Center” tab of the Air King main website at www.airkinglimited.com.

Clean-Up on aisle 5 – using fans to help dry floors

You just finished washing the floor and the shine of a clean surface is glistening in the sunlight. A job well done. Then you hear it, the kids, the dog, your spouse. With cat like reflexes you protect the area yelling – THE FLOOR IS STILL WET! Then you see your family standing in the middle of the floor as they turn to you and say – what did you say?

Okay maybe it’s not that dramatic in your home, but there is an easy way to help the drying process. Have you ever considered using a pivoting floor fan or utility fan to speed the drying process?  By placing a fan or two around the area, the force of the air rushing across the floor will speed the evaporation process along, drying the floor in a fraction of the time. Now getting them to remove their muddy shoes before coming in the house, unfortunately we can’t help with that. We’re a fan company not miracle workers.

The best fans for the job are ones where you can pivot the head of the fan down towards the floor. This way the airflow is going directly towards the wet floor. Just a note of caution – whenever you are using an electronic devise and water is involved, make sure the power cord and the fan are not sitting in any puddles of water. Also do not have the fan running while you are cleaning the floor to avoid any water splashing up into the motor area. Always check your owners manual for any additional warnings before using your fan.

Having a floor or utility fan in the home can be a great tool. Not only can you use it to help dry the floors, but it can also be used to circulate air throughout the home, help dry a damp basement or garage and many other uses. To learn more about Air King’s Utility Blowers and Pivoting Floor Fans, visit www.airkinglimited.com

The light bulb revolution is on

If you have gone into your favorite home improvement store lately, you will notice that the light bulb aisle looks completely different. Starting at the beginning of 2012 standard 100 watt incandescent light bulbs were no longer able to be manufactured for sale in the United States. By the beginning of 2014, that also included wattages down to 40 watts. This was enacted under the Energy Independence and Security Act. What this means is that higher efficiency lighting has to be used. Incandescent bulbs use a lot of energy and only turn a fraction of that energy into light. Most of the energy is given off as heat. The two most common replacements are either Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) or Light Emitting Diode (LED). CFLs have been around for a while and are a good alternative. For instance a 26 watt CFL can produce that same amount of light as a 100 watt incandescent light, but uses 74 less watts to do it. Lets assume you change one commonly used 100 watt bulb to a 26 watt CFL. Lets also say that light is typically on 5 hours a day. 5 x 74 = 370 watts/day that you would save. That is over 135,000 watts per year for just one light bulb. Now you may or may not agree with the government’s involvement with this act (that is a discussion for a different blog), but what is clear is the energy and ultimately the cost saving for all home owners. Lighting manufacturers have made it very easy to make the transition from incandescent lighting by using the same base for CFL and LED lights as incandescent. That means you can take the old one out and screw the new one right into the same socket. To learn more about lighting and how it effects Air King’s bathroom exhaust fans and kitchen range hoods, visit www.airkinglimited.com.

A breath of Fresh Air – IAQ

You generally do not hear people tell you to go inside for a big breath of fresh air, yet this is where we spend a good portion of our lives.  If you live in colder climate areas you probably look forward to that first warm day of spring when you can open the windows and feel that rush of fresh air come into your home.

You hear the term Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) being thrown around but what does that encompass? There are all kinds of filters and gadgets on the market today that make a multitude of claims. While a lot of these help, they are still just recirculating the existing air within the home. Exchanging the stale air within the home with fresh air from outside is still the most effective way to ensure your home’s indoor air quality.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) has done extensive research and work, including developing design standards to ensure indoor air quality. With the introduction of the new design standard known as ASHRAE 62.2, ASHRAE requires a continuously operating exhaust fan to exhaust the stale air within the home and replace it with fresh air from outside the home.

Air King offers a quick calculator to see how much ventilation you need for your specific home as well as energy efficient ventilation products including exhaust fans and kitchen range hoods designed to meet and exceed the ASHRAE 62.2 standard. To learn more, please visit the ASHRAE 62.2 learning center on the Air King web site for more detailed information.  

Does your exhaust fan sound like an Airplane? Time for a new one?

Quick, name the top 5 reasons people do not use their bathroom exhaust fans:

1. It's too loud

2. It's too loud

3. It's too loud

4. It's too loud

5. It doesn’t work anymore

Unfortunately, not using the exhaust fan in your home can cause some serious issues with mold, mildew and indoor air quality. We get it, if it sounds like an airplane engine in your bathroom, you don’t want to turn it on.

The first thing to do is determine if the problem might be able to be corrected or if that is just how loud the fan is. Air King offers many troubleshooting tips in the FAQ section at www.airkinglimited.com. Common issues include blockages in the ducting, build up of debris on the blades of the fan and mechanical issues such as broken welds on the fan housing.

If it is not a problem with the fan, it might be that the fan just is that loud. Many times in new construction, not a lot of attention is given to the exhaust fans, so less expensive – louder operating models are used. On most models there will be a label that tells you the sound level. If your model doesn’t have a label, you can try and find the model number and the manufacture to see if they have any information online.

Sound is measured in sones. A rating at or below 1 sone will be very quiet. 1 to 2 sones will still be quiet but anything over 4 sones starts to get loud. If your fan’s normal operating level is higher than what you want, or any of the troubleshooting tips do not solve the issue, you might want to consider replacing it. An exhaust fan replacement can typically be completed by a homeowner with some electrical and general handyman skills in an afternoon. There are many factors that can influence the ease or difficulty of the installation including the size of the ducting, if the new fan is larger than the existing one and if you can access the fan from above.

Air King always recommends consulting a professional if you are unsure about any aspects of the installation. Air King has a large selection of energy efficient, quiet exhaust fans to meet the needs of almost any home. To learn more about Air King’s bathroom exhaust fans, visit www.airkinglimited.com.