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Call B&B Air Conditioning & Heating Service at 866-604-1220
Serving Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
Serving Maryland and Washington, D.C.
Serving Fairfax and Loudoun Counties and the surrounding area
You know your air conditioning system has limits. It can’t make your house as cold as the inside of the freezer in your refrigerator, after all. But when you look at the thermostat for your home, you might wonder if the AC could potentially go lower than the lowest setting on the thermostat. Most thermostats have a temperature setting low of 60–63°F, which is colder than most people want their homes to be. But theoretically, how cool can your central air conditioner make your home?
This is much more than a theoretical question! Understanding the limits on your AC’s cooling can help you know why air conditioning system sizing is so important and how air conditioners operate.
Front Row Left to right: Denis Cerna (Rockville location), Anthony Arevalo (Gaithersburg location), Luis Bermudez (Gaithersburg location), Eric Rindfleisch (Sterling location)
Back Row Left to right: Nicholas Hayden (Annapolis location), Adam Terrazas (Fairfax location), Peter Campos (Fairfax location)
Congratulations to our newest B&B Institute of Advanced Heat Pump Technology Graduates from HVAC 101 on June 8, 2022! Onwards and upwards, we are so proud of your achievements!
Special Note From Their Instructor
It is with great honor and pleasure to announce this year’s B&B Institute HVAC 101 graduates. Please give them all a big hand for their diligent work and study. I am so proud of all my students and their accomplishments over this last year. I am sure when they complete all of their upcoming studies at the B&B Institute of Advanced Heat Pump Technology that they will be some of the best HVAC Technicians in this Industry! Congratulations to all, keep up the great work!
If you take good care of your home’s central air conditioner and regularly schedule maintenance for it, it should work with few problems for most of its service life. Repair problems can still crop up, however, and one we advise you to look out for is leaking refrigerant. This is a common issue with AC systems and also one of the most damaging.
An air conditioning system can run into several different types of malfunctions over its service life. One of the more common is called short-cycling, which is both a symptom and an underlying problem. If an AC begins to turn on and off rapidly over a short period of time (four times or more during an hour), then it’s short-cycling. If you notice this occurring with your air conditioner, please don’t shrug it off or hope it gets better. This is a major malfunction that can warn of several significant underlying problems that require professional air conditioning service in Damascus, MD.
If you know the basics of how central air conditioning systems work, then you understand that an AC doesn’t use water to cool the air. The AC in your house cools down the air using refrigerant, which absorbs heat along the indoor evaporator coil, then releases that heat outside through the outdoor condenser coil.
However, water is a part of the way your AC works, and it isn’t surprising to discover water leaking from the indoor unit. It’s not something you want to see happen, however! We’ll explain how water leaks can occur in an air conditioner so you’ll know when to call our technicians for air conditioning service in Clarksburg, MD.
This may be the spring when you have your old, inefficient, and unreliable air conditioning system sent to the recycling yard and a new one put in its place. We encourage making this change, and our technicians are the trustworthy experts who can see you get the best new system with the best possible installation.
One important consideration when you’re looking for a new AC is its efficiency ratings. These ratings give you an idea of how well an air conditioning system converts electrical power into cooling power. The efficiency of air conditioners is continually advancing, so even making the switch to a mid-efficiency AC will likely improve over your current one. Below we’re going to go over the basics of these efficiency ratings: what they mean and how to use them.
Owning an air conditioner is a great way to keep your home cool during the warmer months. Nevertheless, this only remains true as long as the unit stays in good working order. While most air conditioning units are fully functional upon arrival, without the proper maintenance they become less functional over time. Therefore, learning the early signs of trouble with your air conditioner can be one of the best ways to protect your unit for the long term. With that in mind, the following is an overview of the early signs of trouble with your air conditioner.
With the warmer seasons right around the corner, taking time to complete your spring-cleaning tasks is vital. Indeed, spring cleaning is beneficial because it can reduce stress, anxiety, depression, as well as the risk of injury and more. Moreover, it is essential to clean around your home and clean and maintain your appliances as well.
With all this spring cleaning in mind, the following is a list of the benefits of getting your air conditioner tuned up this spring.
This is a “PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT” from B&B Air Conditioning & Heating Service Co., Inc. to our highly valued clientele on the availability and the future outlook of HCFC-22 refrigerant or as the industry calls it, R-22 or Freon. If your current residential or commercial air conditioner or heat pump system was manufactured before 2008, then your system may utilize HCFC-22.
Section 605 of the Clean Air Act establishes the U.S. phaseout targets for Class II substances. In 1993, EPA established the phaseout framework and the “worst-first” approach, which focused first on HCFC-22, HCFC-141b, and HCFC-142b because they have the highest ozone depletion potentials of all HCFCs. The phaseout schedule has drastically diminished the availability of HCFC-22 and has exponentially driven up the overall cost of this refrigerant over the past two years.
What does this mean to you? Well, if your equipment utilizes HCFC-22 and you experience a malfunction in the refrigeration circuit, then you will have a very serious decision to consider. The cost associated in repairing older systems is extremely difficult to justify because of the pricing of HCFC-22. Currently, HCFC-22 has a price range of $250.00 to $300.00 per pound and many of our suppliers have quit handling the product due to the high cost associated with maintaining inventory. The average residential air conditioning or heat pump system uses approximately 8-12 lbs to provide the required cooling capacity, and we anticipate the cost to continue to escalate as we approach the spring/summer of 2022.
The other alternative to repairing your antiquated air conditioning or heat pump system is to have new updated equipment installed that doesn’t use HCFC-22 refrigerant. All equipment manufactured after 2008 required the implementation of an alternative refrigerant. Currently, the HVAC industry is using HFC-410A or R-410A which is a “chlorine-free” based refrigerant and is much safer on the atmosphere.
Updating homeowner’s equipment is not as easy as it sounds today. Each and every person in the United States are experiencing some sort of supply chain issue. The manufacturers of HVAC equipment are having the same dilemmas. Copper, steel & aluminum are critical materials that manufacturers use to build their products. These supply chain issues have drastically reduced the production of HVAC equipment and it is our understanding that the availability of air conditioning & heating equipment will only worsen as we enter 2022.
B&B Air Conditioning & Heating Service Co., Inc. has been in business since 1957 and has grown to be one of the largest HVAC service companies in the Washington/Baltimore Metro area. This enormous feat could not have been accomplished without keeping our clients informed with real issues that are relevant to this industry today.
If your HVAC equipment was manufactured prior to 2008, we are strongly urging our customers to consider proactively exploring the age of your HVAC equipment before a problem arises. If you don’t know when your equipment was manufactured, then please contact us and we can research your service information so we can aid in determining the age of your equipment, and if necessary provide you with a free at-home solution.
Air conditioning systems are intricate devices, which means many different components can fail and create malfunctions. The good news is that modern AC design makes these systems durable and, with proper routine care for the system—such as professional maintenance done every spring—an air conditioner can make it through its service life of 10–15 years with minimal problems.
We take care of many AC repairs in Annapolis, MD, so we’ve seen just about everything that might go wrong with a home cooling system. One of the most common is short cycling. In this post, we’ll look at short cycling to help you understand it and deal with it.
