SUMMARY KEYWORDS
abt, home, filtration, air filter, summer, HVAC system, air conditioning
00:02
Before you start your next do it yourself project, listen to this. You Got This! is on the air. You Got This! is hosted by ABT plumbing electric heat and air owner, Andrew Twidwell, and Rosalie Brown with a helping hand. Here are Andrew and Rosalie.
00:18
Hi, this is Rosalie Brown coming to you with another episode of You Got This!, the show about DIY do’s and don’ts. I caught myself up because Andrew usually does a lead in, so I’m stumbling this morning. It’s afternoon, I don’t even know what day is it? What time is it?
00:37
Okay, so the show is brought to you by ABT plumbing,
00:39
electric heat and air. And this week, we do not have Andrew with us. But I do have special guests too. You’ve all listened to before. Ms. DeeDee Vierra is with me today. And we’re going to talk about some HVAC stuff. But first I want to catch up with DeeDee because one, she’s my friend and two, I never get to find out what’s going on. Because we’re too busy. So what do you been up to?
01:04
Oh my gosh, I’m just living the dream, man.
01:10
That sounds really authentic.
01:12
Yeah, doesn’t it though? No, just been busy. You know, works busy. Life is busy, you know, kind of trying to prep for summer because summers always nuts. both professionally and personally. So you know, trying to just get all my ducks in a row. And of course, they’re all gonna wander off 17 different directions. So it’s like, you know,
01:34
it’s like herding cats. I do know, it’s like you just when you think you got this figured out. You totally don’t.
01:40
Yeah, exactly.
01:43
Okay, so yeah, I’m just gonna go ahead and say to our 13 listeners, so I did something really? What I never say stupid. It’s more expected. I guess people that know me expect this me. So I went down to the Gulf of Mexico of all places. And I think I remember this from other times my life when you go to different spots closer or further from the equator and things like that. The sun is different. You’re different. Like it’s Be careful of how much sun exposure you get. So I didn’t do that. though. Okay, that’s not true. Because you can see my face I look like I’m normally my normal pale complexion, right? Yeah. Looks the same to you. Have you seen the pictures of my feet on social media?
02:31
Yeah, yeah, I saw your feet and I remember I said ice them. Right get some aloe gel.
02:38
Oh my gosh. Okay, so yeah, so um, fried meatloaf is what I’ve been calling them. And it was you know, uncomfortable the first couple days. But you know you slog through it? Well, I had a connection as we I don’t know if you can ever fly direct anywhere anymore. So everywhere I go, there’s always a connection. And so my flight was late. My connection I got to Dallas on the way home you know, with these horrible feet, and it was painful even have shoes on? Well, guess what? Your window closed because now your next flight from Dallas to California is about to take off. So I was running through the airport. And I cannot tell you the amount of cursing and expletives that left my mouth as I was jogging through the Dallas airport. With these weren’t meatloaf feet. It was horrible. So today, I finally got I could put on shoes barely today, today’s we’re recording on Wednesday. And I went down and was at the store. The pharmacist said oh, let me take a look. I know he’s not a doctor. But he says that he goes, Oh, let me go look at you with your sun poisoning. And I was like sun poisoning. I’m like, that explains so much. Like now I feel like okay, I wasn’t just being a big baby.
04:00
Yeah, no, I have burned to talk to my feet like you did. And then I’ve also burnt the bottom of my feet for it was wretched. Wretched. I fell asleep laying on my stomach. And it was bad. It was horrible.
04:16
Oh my God. Listen, it was bad enough when like the shoes were hitting the top of the feet, right? Yeah, literally. My feet were so swollen. I didn’t even have ankles. Like I just got ankles back today.
04:29
But the bottom. I don’t know how awful you’d be in mobile. If I couldn’t walk. I mean, it was horrific. Oh, God. And then yeah. And then when they appealed and they were itching and oh, it’s just it was the worst.
04:42
Well, we’re still in the third circle of the pain. So we’ll see. By the time I hopefully see you again. I’ll have normal feet. I did. I did learn a valuable lesson when people say sunscreen. I was like, I got my face covered. I got my body covered up. I was all covered up and was walking on the beach and I go Just barefoot and oops, won’t do that again. So, while everyone else has been living life I’ve been learning simple elementary lessons. So yeah, I think my, I think my folks would be proud that at my age I finally figured out on screen isn’t a joke. No,
05:17
like, I’ve even had friends like you’re out and you got you know, camping and stuff. And it’s like, Hey, keep us some sunscreen on my back and like have like, swath of like, just for like almost blistered because they totally miss like a huge section. Like what the heck, like, Royal Moon sore throat like Oh, roll. Yeah.
05:37
Yeah, I’m not trusting anyone anymore. I’m just gonna go ahead. And yeah, I’m just going to just hold body coverage note. Yeah,
05:43
I mean, we’re sleeping bag.
05:45
Yeah, I you know, I’m just gonna stay indoors for now. I mean, you know, we were sitting at a pretty cool place, I could have just stayed indoors and been entertained. But, um, so I am in my recovery from Sun poisoning effect. And looking forward to not much right now. I’m just really living in the moment. I’m not gonna lie. And you’re trying to come up with some great things to talk about the future, but feeling I think about is getting through today. I’m, I’m sitting down, so I’m okay. What’s your weather? Because I think that’s also going to tie in to what we talk about, right? Are you guys heading into warmer you must be?
06:18
Well, normally, yes. But right now, we’re actually still in a cool down. So we’re like getting really, even into the 70s, probably for like, another couple of weeks. The weather’s been well, it’s been very Nevada County, let’s just be honest. So, you know, up and down, up and down. Right now it’s kind of cooler, we might have some more rain coming in, which would be great. And then you know, the next day, it’s gonna be 103. So, you know, it’s one of those things where, you know, we’re trying to get a hold of as many customers as you can to say, hey, it’s a great time to get your AC tuned up, because I know it’s not hot today, but it’s going to be hot, like, in the middle of the night, and you your stuffs not going to work?
07:01
Well, I mean, that’s the thing, right is like we talked about it all the time. But the you know, this shoulder season kind of gets harder to predict, but because things keep changing, but it does feel like okay, right now would be the time to go ahead and jump on, or you don’t need the AC yet. Let’s go and take a look at it. Right. And some other cool stuff we’re going to talk about today. So we’ll just dive into kind of the H fac topic. And it’s so great to have you here. Because if I were to have Andrew on, he would be winging it. You’re you’re in the field working with this stuff. So you’re legit, your H doc Pro.
07:44
Okay, so, a while on TV,
07:46
I will look you’re playing one on our zoom right now. So I am so I am now in the mode where I’m gonna read some stuff and try to make it sound like it’s very natural. Okay? So just pretend Ooh, and on be like amazed. All right. Okay, so that’s why you’re my friend. Okay, so according to the Department of Energy 75% of all homes in the US have air conditioners. And I gotta tell you that a big part of my adult life, I was not in that 75%. So I am grateful to be one of those folks that have a seat because it changes everything, right. So obviously, air conditioners work by applying the principles of refrigeration, they removed the heat from an area of the outside of the home to the outside, and the cold air created by this process is distributed by fan. Can we get it? Great. So typically, your H HVAC unit, your heating and cooling units are pretty durable, right? And, you know, if you’re in the middle of summer, your unit is going to run several hours a day, perhaps depending on your lifestyle. And I was reading that they typically like have a useful life of 15 years or more, right? What What age do you have based on what you see out in the field is 15 years about right? Or do you have a feel for how long these things last?
09:13
I mean, typically, the age range is between 10 and 15 years. We obviously see the extreme of both sides. We’ve seen new equipment that fails after five years and we have customers that have you know, sort of 30 years old and doing great. I will say units going past 15 years is not not unexpected, but not necessarily completely the norm especially that we find that a lot of maintenance gets deferred, and a lot of people don’t even know to do maintenance on their units. And so we I think that equipment, you know, should easily last 15 years but it’s not going to without having tuneups and regular checkups and cleaning wasn’t that kind of thing?
10:01
Sure. I mean, so the easiest thing, right? We talked about this all the time, it’s almost like a public service announcement. Right? So one of the ways you would maintain your system, I would think longer would be changing your air filter, right? Yes. And so our, I think the standard is like, literally once a month, is that what you would say once a month?
10:22
Well, standard is actually supposed to be every three months, I tell customers to do it every two months, depending on the type of filtration
10:28
they have. And also right on the type of on your lifestyle like pets. Right, let’s say you have a gaggle of pets, would you then say, okay, maybe go go sooner rather than later on that?
10:41
Yeah, I mean, if a customer has kind of your basic, what I call like throwaway filters, you know, those are inexpensive enough that, especially if you have pets, that change about once a month, I mean, they’re like five or $6 from your local hardware store. I do recommend getting better filtration, if possible, like an April air system, where those filters are usually a once a year filter change. Sometimes they can go longer if you don’t have pets and your houses pretty clean. If you live on a ranch, you might be changing between six months and a year. But filtration aspect is much higher. It’s actually a long line, it’s full HEPA filtration closer to that, which you would see like in a hospital. And even though you and I get major benefits from that filtration, it’s really about protecting the equipment and allowing the equipment to actually last longer. So that’s where we’re seeing a lot of equipment going past the 15 year mark is when people are changing filters, and are also have really good filtration systems.
11:51
Okay, so I have a question that is going to seem like a no. Gotta make a dumb question. Maybe. But you know, me. So you know,
12:00
there’s no dumb questions.
12:01
Well, okay, that’s sweet. I appreciate that. Since I’ve said poisoning. Okay, so I think that, can you talk just for a minute about because I find it interesting. Hopefully, the 12 other people listening are gonna find it interesting. What kind of factors would go into the size of the heating and cooling unit that I get from my house? Like, what kind of stuff factors into that?
12:29
I mean, what’s the actual tonnage that would be for your home?
12:33
Right? Like, what How would I know? I mean, obviously, you know, abt is going to, you know, go to the property and take a several things into consideration for making a recommendation, right? What kind of what kind of things go into that decision.
12:47
So many things one location, location, location. So I’m, you know, the system that you may need in Marysville versus a system you may need up in Truckee are going to be probably vastly different. As well as square footage of the home ceiling height, insulation, double pane versus single pane versus triple pane windows. So there’s definitely quite a few factors that we take into consideration. Yeah, like, for instance, let’s say my old house, you know, up on banner, I didn’t have air conditioning. I did. The last year I was there, I put a mini split in which I use the air conditioning when it was fire season. And so I was using it to filter the air in my home. But up there, I didn’t really need to, truly I didn’t need to have air conditioning because I was at such a high elevation and I didn’t really get many hot days now over the years that has changed. And we are now installing air conditioning on a lot of homes up the hill. But down the hill for you know, even Marysville Yuba City, smarts Ville, the efficiencies that you want for air conditioning there, you know, generally are going to be higher because you want to pay it you want to be able to use that system more and pay less. And that’s also something that we take into consideration when installing systems in people’s homes. Because someone who’s using a system, say in rough and ready probably uses it a good three weeks longer than someone living in Nevada City for the coin season.
14:33
Right, right. And I mean, even people that didn’t you know, when I lived in Banner mountain, I lived at about 3300 square feet arm to square foot. It helped me elevation 33 Okay, took me a minute when the sun goes in my brain as well. Okay, anyway, but I also had a lot of sugar pines on my property and so I actually was in the shade Eat a good bit of the time. And that did make a huge difference. Yeah, so I can survive without air conditioning, but I’m not gonna lie there was always like one week, every year where I was like, That’s it, I gotta move, like I need the AC. But um, but you know, if I lived in the flatlands, I think I would be it to me it’d be unbearable to be without AC in the flatlands you know, without all the shade and elevation. So, I agree like that has a lot to do with how much you’re going to use your unit, how hard it’s going to run. This seems basic as well, I think we talked about this a lot. But if I were looking to again, kind of preserve and maintain my unit, you’re going to recommend, right that I would cover my unit might like my AC condenser, in the fall and winter, when I’m not really using it.
15:52
If you if you have trees around your home and leaves and debris are falling into the condenser during the off months, then yeah, I would say go ahead and cover it. If it’s we have a lot of homes that you know the condenser there’s nothing around the house, then it doesn’t matter. They’re meant to be outside 24/7. So it’s not going to hurt it. But like even at my own house, now I have oak trees. And so the oak leaves and stuff fall in there during the fall and winter months. And so I cover it. And if you don’t cover it in that debris in there, you definitely want to have a technician clean it thoroughly before you use it for your summer months.
16:33
Yeah, absolutely. I have a question that I’m just full of questions. Otherwise, when we talk about sites, my poor life choices. So no, I’ve heard this. I don’t know that I’ve had this happen. But what would cause an AC unit to freeze up? Because I’ve heard that term, but I don’t think I really know what that is exactly.
16:57
So it actually ice is over. So there’s a couple things that can we are a few things that can cause that. One of the more common things is a clogged filter. I will say that probably a good 10 times a year, I will go to a home where it’ll be either a no heat call or a no cooling call. And first thing I ask is, you know, where’s your filter? Like, check that out? And they say, Do I have a filter? I don’t think there is a filter here. Yes, every system has a filter because it needs a return. And we go there and we’ll find it. And it literally is like a carpet. It’s like a chunk of rug out of your living room. And it can’t breathe. So it it ice is over. The airflow is restricted, and so the system ices itself up. The other thing that’s a big issue for systems icing over is low refrigerant. So I have gone to homes where it is a solid block of ice, the entire evaporator coil is a solid block of ice and we’ve had to use like torches to try and get it to melt in order to replace it. We’ve had customers we had to just line tarp around it and everything to direct water and let it just defrost on its own. And it can take days before you can test anything to find leaks and or replace the coil. So and when it’s icing over, people will often say you know they don’t even know it’s ice you know where they just know they don’t have cold air coming into their house and it’s 106 outside and they can’t understand like when we say oh no it’s a step How can anything be a step at that temperature? But it does it It can’t breathe in the blood if you will can’t flow through the system and so it can’t cool it so ice is over and is not cooling doing the sorry, cooling exchange of hot air to cold air.
18:58
I would also be that person that would go Yeah, I don’t think it’s possible that it’s frozen over I would I would be that person I like my house is 110 inside. Okay, so here’s a here’s an interesting question. So um, so why would like my ducks be making my air ducts be making a popping sound when the furnace starts or stops? Do you know what that is?
19:23
I lost the first part of your question. Can you say one more time?
19:26
What is there a reason why my air ducts would be making a popping sound when the furnace either starts or stops.
19:36
It might be traveling through your air duct like through the register but most likely it could be one of the plenums as it heats up or cools down depending on what airflow is going through it kind of like a when you’re driving from Auburn to Nevada City. If you have a bottle of water, plastic bottle water and a little pop. It’s the same idea. Yeah.
20:01
Okay, interesting. All right, so
20:03
I shouldn’t freak out. expansion and contraction.
20:06
Okay. All right. So I have kind of a big question. Maybe it’s a little bit loaded. But probably the last question I’ll throw upon you today. But is there people always want to know, like, what’s the okay, you’re an H back Pro. Okay. Well, like what’s the best way for me to extend the life of my unit? It? If there is such a thing as the best way, right? Because you want to extend the life a bit? Maybe there’s things you absolutely shouldn’t do. Maybe that’s kind of how you approach that question.
20:37
Well, I mean, like I said before, definitely, filtration is key, making sure your filters are clean changed regularly. Having maintenance done once a year, if you use your system, year round, I would have it checked twice a year. I mean, it’s such cheap insurance to catch things before they’re a huge problem. And making sure the whole system is clean, you know, oftentimes, we offer customers, you know, cleanings because either rodents can get in there, or just dust and film can get even on the like the blower motor blades, and it can just be a slight film, and it will change the efficiencies and drop them 20 to 30%. So making sure your system is clean is such a big deal for maintenance and longevity. And we can catch things, you know, parts were out. I mean, that’s what they’re made to do. So we can catch stuff before it’s kind of like the knee bones connected to the shin bone to the ankle bone type of thing. You know, we want to catch if one part is going out, we don’t want to take out three more parts in the line because we let it go too long.
21:46
Yeah, well, I think, yeah, twice a year. It’s interesting, because I was thinking, you know, as you you’re using the furnace for part of the year, and then you’re using the AC unit part of the year, right. So if I were to call out abt say, because we are kind of in the pre summer zone right now. I would assume that your calls now you’d be able to schedule some this time of year to get us prepped for summer. Because once everyone’s got their AC on, and once the first heatwave hits, every contractor in town that does H vac is going to be all struggling to get the same parts in the waitlist for appointments is gonna get get out there.
22:30
Oh, yeah. I mean, as soon as you know, to go into our county form, it says it turns 100 over 100 degrees, which it’ll do overnight. We will be booked out two weeks. I mean, it’s just literally instantaneous. And it will continue throughout the summer and get longer throughout the summer. Because everybody just gets so busy. And you know, in the wintertime, you can often you know, wear a blanket and put on a sweatshirt and kind of bundle up if your furnace isn’t working. But you can only be so naked in the summertime. And you’re so grumpy. So, you know,
23:03
I again, again, Sun poisoning. So I just want to say so I want to say thank you like we’re actually rapping. That was a that was a quick show because I had a good guest that could talk to me and entertain me. Thank you. Listen, if you So you heard it from DD, let’s get you on the books now. Um, if you have anything that you need to have checked out with your H fac even if it’s your annual safety inspection, let’s get it booked. Now. You can call abt at 530-230-9092 InGaAs. Visit us on the web. There we go at easy as abc.com Find us on Facebook and I appreciate you tuning in. We have Andrew back with us next week. Thanks,
23:43
Andrew. Thanks, Rosalie. Now let’s get that project started. You got this we’ll be back next Friday morning and nine o’clock on Cancio Newstalk 830