Home » Community » Energy efficiency and durability Does an AC compressor located in full sun work harder than one located in the shade? Our AC compressor is located on the south side of our Florida home and it seems to me that if it were shielded in some way it would not have to work as hard - is this correct? Tags: Energy efficiency and durability Minisplit Design for Whole House Most efficient use of 3/4" polyiso on exterior (polyiso is foil faced on both sides) Basement – Best way to eliminate musty smell / mildew/ mold etc Choosing a wall assembly: discussion Heat pumps and traditional heatingMy relationship with my wife runs hot and cold.In the winter, she likes to save on heating costs by keeping the house a little cooler, while I prefer it warm. In the summer it's worse. Each time one of us walks past the thermostat, we override the other's preferred setting. She sets it at 76 degrees and I punch it down to 72 — warmer than my preferred 68 degrees, but a fair compromise, I believe.

Of course, in the middle of a Texas summer, the exercise is pointless. The only effective button-pushing we're engaged in is with each other because our air conditioner can run 18 straight hours a day and it still never drops below 80 degrees inside. I think this has been the case in each of the dozen summers we've spent here, but maybe the heat has warped my memory.Still, there must be something we can do to keep our house cooler beneath the blazing sun.Michael Scher, owner of Austin-based All Year Heating & Cooling (www.allyearaustin. com), believes an ounce of prevention is worth several degrees of cure. He recommends getting a professional inspection, preferably before we have too many more days of extreme heat like we've experienced this week. An inspection can turn up problems that wouldn't otherwise become obvious until AC units start working much harder and longer as the temperature climbs.Last summer, Scher ran across a rash of failing capacitors — the electrical components in air conditioning systems that help the motor start or run."

Boy, they would swell up and sometimes burst from the heat," he says. Hot weather aside, there's also heat caused by continued use.Cleaning is important, too. Even if you check and change your filter every month, there are system components inside and outside that collect dirt and debris, degrading operation. "Ultimately, that could take a toll on the lifespan of the equipment, but immediately it starts to impact the operating cost," Scher says.That cleaning job is best left to a professional. "I guess somebody with a good deal of mechanical expertise wouldn't hesitate to turn off the electric power and remove whatever panels are necessary and start hosing it down in the proper manner, but most people don't," he says.In my case, Scher suspects a leak in the ductwork."In the South and Southwest, where we stick all of this stuff in the attic, it's very easy for an air leak (in the ductwork) to go unnoticed," Scher says. "Until we go searching for it, we wonder why the house can't be pulled down to a reasonable temperature or why the electric bill is twice as much as it was last summer."

We have all the classic symptoms. Our house is excessively dusty, our ceiling vents are plagued with dirt streaks and we have to change our filter constantly."best ac unit for mobile homeIt's very possible that there's a leak in the attic drawing in that horrible, dusty, humid, hot air and pushing it on through the system, particularly if it looks that way in all of the rooms," Scher says.ac unit fan wont turn onSo, I'm past due for an inspection. cheap ac repair carBut what can I do in the meantime to keep my house cooler, save on power bills and prolong the life of my AC equipment?Scher advocates temperature management inside the home — and not the passive-aggressive kind we practice at my place. "Set back the thermostat when you leave the house," he says.

"If everybody in the home leaves by 8 or 9 in the morning and doesn't come back 'til 5 or 6 in the evening, it's a no-brainer."How much higher you should set your thermostat when you're not at home depends on how well your house retains the cool air once the unit is turned off. "If your house is not a good performer, it's not a good idea to let it get so warm during the day that it takes hours to recover at night," Scher says. "Not only are you uncomfortable for that long, but the extended run time will cost more than just cycling on and off."When it comes to fans, Scher is partial to the ceiling variety and less enthusiastic about the "whole house" type up in the attic. "I wind up taking more of those out than we put in," he explains. He says two things work against attic fans in the Austin area: First, they pull in outside air, which can exacerbate allergies. Second, that outside air contains a lot of humidity."It's going to be removed by the air conditioner the next morning, but it's going to take a lot of energy to remove it," he says.

Ceiling fans, on the other hand, draw air across the skin, drying perspiration and delivering a cooling sensation. Scher recommends treating them like light fixtures and turning them off when you leave the room.A lot of heat is transferred into homes via direct sunlight. Scher says that solar screens or tinting film can block up to 50 percent or more of the sun's radiant energy, which can make a big difference. "They don't all do that well, and they get darker and darker as they do. Some people object to that look," he notes. A more pleasant possibility, he suggests, is planting trees or tall shrubs to shade a window.And a whole industry has sprung up in Scher's 27 years in the business around window replacement. "The performance of windows and glass has made great strides over what it was when houses were built in the '70s and '80s," he says. "If you have a particularly old house, you can impact your comfort and energy bills by replacing those old, inefficient windows."Austin Energy has programs that provide interest-free and low-interest loans for the purchase of home energy improvements including new air conditioning, duct repairs, insulation and solar screens.