D'Spain Sales and Service Blog : Posts Tagged ‘Helotes’

3 Things That Will Happen After Your Air Conditioner Is Professionally Maintained

Monday, September 28th, 2015

Our daytime heat isn’t slowing down all that much in Helotes, but our evenings are relatively comfortable. But the bottom line is that most homeowners are still needing their air conditioning systems around the clock, and we have a long cooling season here. The fall equinox reminds us that another season is upon us, but more importantly that it’s time to once again maintain our properties, and this includes the bi-annual maintenance of your air conditioning system.

Tags: Air Conditioning Maintenance, Helotes
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How Do I Know Which Indoor Air Quality Product Is Right for Me?

Monday, August 10th, 2015

Having clean, healthy air inside your home is important for you, your family and your HVAC system. But with the wide range of IAQ products available, it may be hard to determine which type of product will be the best choice for your home in Helotes, TX. The experts at D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc., can provide you with an overview here, but the best way to find the right IAQ product for your home is to work directly with a trained specialist.

Tags: Helotes, Indoor Air Quality
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3 Reasons to Consider a Heat Pump for Cooling

Tuesday, June 9th, 2015

It is time for a new air conditioner in Helotes, TX? With the temperatures continuing to climb, it’s important to get your cooling back on track as soon as possible. One type of air conditioning system you may want to consider is a heat pump. It may sound counter-intuitive to install a cooling system with the name “heat pump,” but we can assure you that a heat pump system is a very effective cooling system. As with any air conditioning system, it’s important that you hire trained experts to help you with your installation from start to finish. This is where the AC specialists at D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc., come in. We have been installing and servicing all kinds of air conditioning systems for over 40 years. If you are interested in a heat pump system to cool your home, give us a call today!

Tags: Heat Pumps, Helotes
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How Can a Whole Home Dehumidifier Help with Cooling?

Monday, June 1st, 2015

Humidity is a part of our heat in the Helotes, TX, area, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle for uncomfortable conditions inside your home, especially if you have a whole home air conditioning system. The entire reason to have AC in your house is to be comfortable during our intense summer months, and if yours is struggling with our humidity levels, it’s time to consider helping you and your AC with a whole house dehumidifier.

Tags: Dehumidifiers, Helotes
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Use the Earth to Cool My House? Huh?

Tuesday, April 14th, 2015

Have you ever noticed how your home’s basement maintains a steady temperature year-round, whether it’s 40 degrees or 100 degrees outside? The reason this happens is that the ground beneath the frost line stays within the same temperature range of 55-61 degrees all year, so your cellar does, too. Geothermal systems use this idea to provide your home with cooling and heating in the most efficient and sustainable way possible. Sound crazy?

Tags: Geothermal, geothermal cooling, Helotes
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Why You Need to Change Your AC’s Air Filter

Thursday, April 2nd, 2015

Any air conditioner in a place that can grow as hot as Helotes, TX will do an enormous amount of work during the year. To make sure that an AC works at peak energy efficiency and lasts for as many years as possible, it must have the stress and strain from all the work that it does lessened through regular maintenance.

Most maintenance jobs require an HVAC technician. Arrange to have a full inspection and tune-up for your air conditioning system from a professional each spring. However, there are a few maintenance steps you should take over the summer while the AC runs on a regular basis. One of the most important is to routinely change the air filter, or clean it if the AC uses a permanent filter.

Call D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. to arrange for spring maintenance for your air conditioning in Helotes, TX. Our technicians will help show you how to take care of changing/cleaning the air filter during the rest of the season.

Why this job is so important

The air filter on your air conditioner isn’t there to protect your indoor air from contaminants, although it does help with this a little. Its real purpose is to keep particles in the air from the return vents from entering the AC and damaging its components. During regular operation, debris such as dust, lint from furniture and carpets, pet hair, and pollen will become trapped in the filter. After a month of steady work, an air conditioner will have a congested filter. Unless the filter is changed or cleaned to get rid of the debris clogging it, it will cause the airflow into the system to drop dramatically.

There are a number of negative consequences to this:

Low airflow will force the AC’s mechanical components to work harder, raising operating costs.
Less warm air across the evaporator coils may cause them to start to freeze.
The airflow from the vents into the rooms will decrease, leading to a drop in comfort.
Contaminants may break through the clogged filter and damage the AC.

Changing the filter or cleaning it is a simple task, and you should do it each month during warm weather. Ask your D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. technician to show you how to do this during the spring maintenance visit. You can rely on us for all your needs for quality air conditioning repair in Helotes, TX.

Tags: Air Conditioning Repair, Helotes
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Some End of Season Heating Services

Friday, March 13th, 2015

As we move through March, we are approaching the end of the heating season: the cooler period of the year when we use our home’s heaters the most. Soon, our furnaces will turn off or our heat pumps will switch over to cooling mode, and we will once more be concerned with staying cool during the heavy Texas heat.

In these waning days of cooler weather, there are some services you can take care of for your heating system that will help make sure you will encounter as few troubles as possible before you switch entirely to air conditioning, and also to ensure the heater will work when heating season returns at the end of the year.

Call on D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. for any professional assistance you may need for heating in Helotes, TX and the surrounding areas.

Make sure the heater receives regular maintenance

The mild winters in Texas have an unfortunate side effect of making it easy for homeowners to forget to arrange for regular heating maintenance during the fall. If you didn’t schedule a maintenance visit last fall, you shouldn’t decide to just skip it for a year: it’s never too late to call up our technicians and arrange for your routine maintenance visit. Each year a heater misses maintenance will result in it losing efficiency and costing more to run.

Change the air filter (or clean it)

You should change the air filter for your forced-air heater an average of once a month when it runs on a regular basis. (If you use a permanent filter, you should clean it.) Since your air conditioning system will likely use the same filter, make sure you have it changed/cleaned before the end of the heating season to get rid of any debris that might still be caught in it; that way you enter the cooling season without obstructions blocking the AC’s airflow.

Have any necessary repairs done

This is crucial: if you heater has started to indicate that it is having performance troubles, don’t ignore them since the summer weather is approaching. You should never let a potential repair issue go without attention, since it could mean a heater that fails to come on many months later when you actually need it. The sooner you have a repair done, the less likely it will increase and turn into a bigger repair down the road—or even a full breakdown.

To schedule maintenance or repairs for your heater at the end of the season, contact the Helotes, TX heating professionals at D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. We offer emergency service for your convenience.

Tags: Heating, Helotes
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Furnace Parts You Need to Know

Wednesday, February 18th, 2015

When discussing any major home appliance, like the air conditioner or the furnace, it is greatly beneficial to have at least a working knowledge of its operation. That doesn’t mean that you need to be able to take it apart and put it back together, or even that you need to repair it on your own. Instead, having deeper knowledge of how your appliances work helps you identify when something goes wrong. The faster you can identify a problem, the faster you can get help and have it fixed. With that in mind, let’s look at some of the furnace parts that you need to know.

The Air Filter

The air filter is a part that is installed in the air handler of your furnace, covering the air return section of the ducts. It is responsible for capturing any particles, like dust or debris, which might blow in from the ducts. Such particles could cause damage to the furnace if allowed to infiltrate the system, and the air filter does an excellent job of protecting the furnace from their effects. However, if the air filter is not cleaned or replaced every few months it can become clogged to the point of restricting air flow. This restricted air flow can cause the furnace to overheat and shut down as a safety measure. If you hear your furnace constantly turning on and off again, it is likely because the system is overheating every time it turns on.

The Air Handler

The air handler is the collection of parts that is responsible for circulating air throughout the house. The air handler motor, which is responsible for turning the fan, is the part that is put under the most strain while the furnace is operating. To compensate for this, the motor is equipped with a number of lubricated bearings, which lessen the amount of friction. These bearings can dry out over time, however, which will cause them to wear down. This will cause the friction on the motor to keep increasing until it overheats and burns out. If you hear a grinding sound coming from your furnace, call a professional right away. That’s the sound of the bearings wearing out. If you don’t act quickly, you may have to replace the entire motor instead of just a few bearings.

If you’d like to know more, call D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. today to speak with one of our specialists. We provide professional furnace repair service in the Helotes area.

Tags: Furnace, Helotes
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Why You Should Have Carbon Monoxide Detectors Installed

Wednesday, January 21st, 2015

Carbon monoxide is a deadly gas that kills thousands of people a year worldwide. It is invisible, tasteless, and odorless, making it virtually undetectable to human senses. This is part of what makes it so dangerous. Unfortunately, it also happens to be far more common than you would think. The largest producers of carbon monoxide are natural gas burning furnaces, which also happen to be among the most common types of heating systems. Let’s take a look at how furnaces actually produce carbon monoxide, and why installing carbon monoxide detectors is the best way to keep you and your family safe.

Incomplete Combustion

Carbon monoxide is one of several kinds of toxic gases that are all produced as byproducts of what is called “incomplete combustion.” Incomplete combustion simply means that not all of the fuel burned is converted into heat. Regardless of the kind of fuel you’re burning, if you’re using a combustion system there will always be byproducts left over. Obviously, furnaces would not be viable heating systems if they vented deadly gas into the home every time they were turned on. Therefore, it became necessary to construct a part that could heat the air while venting combustion byproducts out of the house. This part is called the “heat exchanger.”

The Heat Exchanger

The heat exchanger is a tube that connects the furnace burner assembly to the exhaust flue. As the burner assembly creates heat, it also creates combustion byproducts like carbon monoxide, which rise up the heat exchanger. The heat radiates through the heat exchanger and into the air being circulated throughout the home. The combustion byproducts continue to the exhaust flue to be safely disposed of.

The problem is that, over time, the heat exchanger can develop cracks from the stress of being exposed to high temperatures. In some cases, the combustion gases can then travel through these cracks and enter the air in your home. There is no reliable way to test whether or not you have been exposed unless you begin to feel the symptoms, which include headaches, nausea, blurred vision, seizures, and unconsciousness. You don’t want to wait until you experience these symptoms before acting, which is why carbon monoxide detectors are your best bet.

If you’d like to know more or schedule a service, call D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. today. Our professional electricians in Helotes, TX are standing by to help you answer all of your questions.

Tags: Electricians, Helotes
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Are Heat Pumps a Good Choice for Winter Heating?

Wednesday, December 17th, 2014

It’s a good question, but the answer depends entirely on the climate in which you live. Heat pumps are a unique form of heating system, with their own advantages and operation prerequisites. They can certainly serve a home well during winter (why install a heating system that can’t heat during the coldest time of year?) but there are a couple of things about which you should be aware. Let’s take a look at the inner workings of a heat pump, and what it can do for you.

How Heat Pumps Work

A heat pump has two main components, an indoor unit and an outdoor unit. Each unit contains a coil, and is connected by a refrigerant line that runs between them. As the names suggest, the indoor unit is installed inside the house, while the outdoor unit can be installed up to 100ft away.

When the heat is turned on, the outdoor unit uses the coil inside it to evaporate refrigerant into gas. This process leeches heat from the air surrounding the unit into the coil. The gaseous refrigerant is then pumped inside to the indoor unit, which condenses it back into a liquid state. This releases the thermal energy from the refrigerant, where it can be used to heat the home.

This kind of heating has a lot of advantages. It’s energy efficient, safer than combustion systems, and pays for itself in savings on your heating bill. However, there is one big thing you need to think about before installing one:

Climate

As discussed above, heat pumps rely entirely on the surrounding air to provide thermal energy. This is a good thing in some ways, because it allows the heat pump to work without wasting resources on combustion like many heating systems do. Unfortunately, it also means that very cold climates can severely hamper a heat pump’s effectiveness. The colder the air, the less thermal energy will be available for the heat pump to use. This is only a real issue in areas that routinely sink under 0 degrees Fahrenheit. In those areas, however, you might want to consult a professional to see if having a heat pump would be worth it.

If you’d like to know more, call D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc or you can schedule a service appointment with us. We provide heating services in the Helotes area.

Tags: Heating, Helotes
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