Expert HVAC Guidance, Made Simple.
Almost every contractor quoting a 1,000 sq ft home writes down 24,000 BTU. That number comes from a rule of thumb, not your house. The rule multiplies floor area by 20 to 25 BTU. It ignores insulation, windows and envelope tightness. Two 1,000 sq ft homes on the same street can differ by 40 percent. … Read more
A single-zone ductless mini split adds about $11 to $66 a month to a typical electric bill. Most homeowners we tracked landed between $18 and $35. Every mini split calculator online hands you a higher number, and one assumption explains why. The standard formula divides BTU by SEER2, then treats that as your compressor draw … Read more
Your furnace kicks on, runs for three or four minutes, and shuts off again before the house even feels warm. Then it repeats every few minutes through the night. Across our 47-household field study, this pattern traced back to three different root causes, and a clogged filter accounted for only one of them. Short cycling … Read more
Across the Colorado mini split installs we tracked last winter, the Xcel rebate and the state credit came off the invoice as line items before anyone paid a cent. On one three-ton cold-climate system quoted near $21,000, that pair of discounts knocked about $7,750 off the price on the spot. Here is the part the … Read more
The manufacturer says your high-SEER mini split should save you money this summer. Our 47-household, 18-month tracking study says how you run it matters more than what you bought. Across those homes, July and August bills jumped $84 to $217 above the April baseline, and the SEER rating stamped on the outdoor unit barely moved … Read more
Most heat pump quotes leave things out. Across 47 homes our team tracked over 18 months, real installed prices ran from $4,800 to $19,400. The lowest bid usually wasn’t the cheapest job. Those contractors pushed costs past the install date, where homeowners found them showing up one month at a time on the electric bill. … Read more
The filter package says MERV 13 is safe for any modern furnace. Our 47-household field study says that claim falls apart in about one-third of homes. Every time, the cause traces back to one of three variables the packaging never mentions: your blower motor type, your filter slot depth, or how your ductwork was sized … Read more
Walk through any two-story house in January and you will likely find the same scene: a thermostat on the main floor set to 70°F and bedrooms upstairs that feel like an entirely different climate. One floor is too warm to sleep in comfort. The other never quite catches up to the dial. And no single … Read more
The NASA study said houseplants clean the air. Drexel researchers re-ran the math in 2019 and found you would need 10 to 1,000 plants per square meter of floor to match one hour of basic home ventilation. Essential oils fare no better. They add compounds to the room instead of pulling pollutants out of it. … Read more
Pull the air filter out of a heat pump system that hasn’t been changed in four months and hold it up to light. If you can’t see through it, that system is working harder than its rating, cooling less efficiently than you paid for, and moving toward an avoidable service call. The cause is almost … Read more