Your home’s heating load indicates the amount of energy your furnace needs to use to keep you warm and comfortable. If you lower the load, you will save energy and potentially help your heating system last longer with fewer repairs. Help make your furnace’s job easier with these tips.

Regular Filter Changes

Start with an easy one first by checking your air filter. A dirty filter makes your heating system work much harder to pull airflow across the heat exchanger. Further, you’ll save energy by staying on top of filter changes.

Thermostat Settings

Frequently changing the thermostat temperature can reduce heating efficiency. Your best bet for saving energy and maintaining the comfort level you desire is by upgrading to a programmable or Wi-Fi thermostat.

Check Ductwork

In addition to increasing your energy bills, duct leaks increase the stress and load on your furnace. If you find a disconnected duct seam or locate a leak, you can make a quick repair by wrapping it with heat-resistant metal tape.

Air Sealing and Insulation

Air sealing and insulating your Portland area home is a great and practical way to lessen the load on your heating system. Additionally, sealing and insulation lasts for many years and you will save energy and be more comfortable year-round.

• Air sealing — Use foam and silicone weatherstripping to seal your attic door and entry doors respectively. A thin line of caulk seals window frames from the outside. Caulk rope and tension strips seal your windows from the inside.
• Insulation — If you use fiberglass insulation in your attic, it should be higher than the joists. Energy Star recommends attic insulation as high as R-60, which is about 15 to 18 inches of standard fiberglass.

Professional Maintenance

Schedule professional preventive maintenance each spring and fall seasons to keep your furnace, A/C, and ducts in great shape. Professional cleaning, system inspection, and testing ensures that your furnace is operating efficiently and safely.

Make easy work of reducing the load and stress on your furnace by contacting the experts at Roth Home & Coolingtoday! We’ve proudly served Portland area residents and businesses since 1976.

Organizing a plan to avoid frozen pipes this winter will help you combat one of the most dreaded plumbing emergencies during cold weather. When pipes freeze, the water inside them can expand to the point where they burst. Not only will the water damage take a toll on your home, you could lose the convenience of indoor plumbing until the problem is fixed. You can easily prevent the pipes from freezing with little effort or cost.

• Learn where your home’s water shutoff valve is and how to shut it off.
• Note where the pipes are that lie inside or next to exterior walls or the attic. A kitchen or bathroom sink that lies on an exterior wall could have pipes that originate near the exterior. If you can access them, wrap them with foam sleeves that will keep them warmer.
• If your home has a crawl space or basement, seal all the cracks that let cold air enter with caulk or expanding foam. You can also wrap the pipes with loose fiberglass insulation to keep them warmer. You’ll need gloves, a dust mask, and goggles to protect yourself from the tiny particles this type of insulation emits as you handle it. You can also use heat tape to prevent frozen pipes. Some of these wraps are thermostatically controlled and they’ll turn on and off as needed.
• When you’re leaving your home for an extended period, set the temperature to 55 degrees and open the cabinet doors for the kitchen and bathroom sinks. The pipes will stay warm enough to prevent freezing.
• In the event of severely cold temperatures, let a faucet trickle overnight. Choose a faucet on the second floor if you have a two-story home, preferably one whose pipes sit near an outside wall.
• Invest in pipe sealing kits that will stop or slow a frozen pipe leak. Your local home center or hardware store may stock them, or find them online.

To learn more about preventing frozen pipes, contact Roth Home & Cooling, providing trusted HVAC and plumbing services for Portland area homeowners.

You can have the highest-quality furnace or A/C in the world but if your home’s ductwork is defective, you’ll still waste money on energy and not be as comfortable as you’d like. Your indoor air quality might suffer as well. Find out why tight ducts are so essential to effective heating and cooling.

The Importance of Tight Ducts

Most American homes have forced-air heating and cooling systems. A main HVAC system (usually a furnace, A/C or heat pump) creates warm or cool air, and a powerful fan blows that conditioned air throughout your home. It reaches its destination via a network of ducts and registers. Supply ducts take the conditioned air to your rooms, while return ducts and registers draw the air back into the equipment to be heated or cooled all over again. Of course, you want to avoid faulty ductwork, where ducts aren’t well connected to each other, to registers, or to the furnace plenum. Negative consequences of ducts that aren’t tight include:

• Wasted energy, as conditioned air leaks out into unconditioned areas such as crawl spaces, the attic or garage, and wall voids. When this happens, your HVAC equipment must work all the harder to move air to rooms that need heating or cooling.
• Certain rooms that never seem to be cool or warm enough, because so much conditioned air is being lost before it ever gets there. This issue is exacerbated with rooms at the end of long duct runs that are leaking air.
• Indoor air quality that degrades as dirty air from crawl spaces and other unconditioned areas gets sucked into leaky ducts, as a result of negative air pressure. That dirty air winds up circulating throughout your home with the conditioned air.

Achieving Tight Ductwork

While you can find and seal accessible and obviously leaking ducts yourself using mastic sealant and/or metal-backed tape, your best bet is to hire a professional to inspect your ductwork, seal leaks, and apply insulation where necessary

For a professional ductwork inspection in your Portland area home, please contact us at Roth Home & Cooling.

Perhaps more than any other part of your home, the attic is where insulation can do the most good. You want effective attic insulation for all seasons, since a poorly insulated attic can drive up heating bills in the winter and cooling bills in the summer.

Why is Attic Insulation Important?

First it’s important to realize that insulation’s main purpose is to resist the movement of heat from one place to another — from outside to inside in the winter and vice versa in the summer. While some types of insulation also will block air movement, in most cases, you’ll need to seal openings in your home’s outer perimeter (and between the attic and living spaces). Air sealing works in tandem with insulation to keep your home comfortable warm in winter and cool in summer.

If the attic lacks proper insulation, air sealing and ventilation, heat that builds up all day in the summer will transfer down into living spaces, forcing your HVAC system to work harder. In the winter, heat from living spaces will transfer up into the attic, which, once again, makes the chore of your HVAC system all the more difficult (and energy inefficient).

Attic Insulation Options

• The most common insulation is fiberglass rolls (batts or blankets) that you can lay down between beams and joists in the attic.
• Rigid-foam insulation can be cut to fit whatever requirements you have in the attic, though this option isn’t the best one for complete coverage. Some heat is bound to move through openings between the foam boards.
• Loose-fill insulation, made of fiberglass or some other material, can be blown into whatever space you need to have insulated. This provides complete coverage, though it can be expensive. You might also need to hire a professional who has the proper equipment.
• Spray-foam insulation differs from the other types in that effectively stops the movement of both heat and air. Spray foam can be expensive and isn’t as widely used as other types of insulation.

To discuss attic insulation for your Portland area home, please contact us at Roth Home & Cooling.

A variable-speed furnace offers quiet, energy efficient comfort using advanced motor technology. Instead of only running on top speed, a furnace equipped with an electronically-commutated motor (ECM) will adjust its running speeds based on your home’s need for heat. They save energy because ECMs use much less electricity than the standard motor, and its slower running speed helps distribute the heat more evenly.

What a Variable-Speed Furnace Does

Conventional blower motors, known as permanent split capacitor motors (PSCs) use alternating current (AC) while an ECM uses direct current (DC). Since our power supply is AC, the variable-speed furnace motor has an inverter that changes the power flow to DC, which is a more efficient use of electricity.

These motors also include high tech components that work with the HVAC system to sense how much heated air your home needs, and adjust their running speeds accordingly. If it’s just a few degrees, the motor will run at a slower speed. The ECM is also capable of sensing the airflow through the blower, making adjustments for constricted airflow from dirt filters or blocked return registers.

Variable-Speed Advantages

• Cleaner air. Since a variable-speed furnace runs more slowly, it removes more airborne particulates, which creates a healthier home. Anyone who suffers from allergies to pollen, dander or mold may breathe easier.
• Less electrical consumption. Although combustion furnace efficiency isn’t measured by its electrical use alone, your monthly energy bills will drop. If the furnace is equipped with an air conditioning system, your summer cooling costs will also decline. These systems also remove more humidity in the cooling mode since the air handler runs longer.
• Quiet operation. These systems start and stop their cycles slowly. Even at top speeds, these motors are quieter than PSC motors.
• Durability. HVAC systems with variable-speed motors tend to last longer since they avoid the stress and wear that frequent starts cause.

To learn more about a variable-speed furnace, contact Roth Home & Cooling, providing trusted HVAC services for Portland-area homeowners since 1976.

If you have an older home that’s never had its ductwork replaced, or perhaps a relatively new home with badly designed or manufactured ducts, you may need to consider duct repairs or replacement. Faulty ducts can result in substantial energy loss, higher utility bills, uneven heating and cooling, and overworked HVAC equipment. Leaky ducts also can result in backdrafting, with dirty air infiltrating ducts and contaminating indoor air. So, how can you tell your ducts are malfunctioning?

Signs that ductwork needs to be repaired or replaced include:

• Heating and cooling bills that are higher than your neighbors’ bills, even though their homes are the same size as yours.
• A pattern of increased energy costs in recent years that doesn’t seem to have any other explanation.
• Visual signs such as hanging ducts, or duct sections that obviously are not firmly connected.

Of course, the best way to tell whether duct repair or replacement is necessary is with a professional inspection. The HVAC professional will visually inspect the ducts, plus possibly conduct a blower test to determine the physical integrity of the ductwork. This also will reveal whether a professional duct cleaning is necessary.

The professional may recommend duct sealing and perhaps adding insulation to duct sections running through unconditioned areas such as the crawl space or basement. While a moderately handy homeowner can seal loose duct connections in accessible locations with mastic sealant and metal-backed tape, he or she probably can’t access all of the duct network. A truly comprehensive job will require professional service by experts in duct repair and replacement.

In rare cases, the ductwork may have deteriorated so badly, and is in such poor shape, that replacement is the recommended option. Whatever your course of action, it’s vitally important to have efficient, tight ductwork that delivers conditioned air throughout your home, with minimal waste, and then brings it back to your HVAC equipment to be reheated or re-cooled.

For help deciding whether to replace or repair faulty ducts, please contact us at Roth Home & Cooling, providing quality HVAC service to Portland and the surrounding communities.

A ductless mini split offers a solid option for heating and cooling areas in your home that would otherwise pose challenges. Ductless systems work just like central HVAC systems, except they don’t use ductwork for air delivery. They’re one of the most energy efficient and flexible alternatives with a proven record for performance and comfort.

Mini Split Components

The two primary parts of a ductless system are the indoor air handler and the outdoor condenser. A thin conduit that contains refrigerant, power and a drainpipe connect the two. Larger mini splits can support four separate air handlers, making it possible to condition multiple rooms or spaces.

The air handler can sit on the floor or hang from a wall or ceiling. The condenser is more compact than those associated with central systems. Installers drill a small hole in an exterior wall to run the conduit that connects the condenser to the air handler.

System Advantages

Since they don’t use ductwork, mini splits are ideal appliances for conditioning spaces where running ductwork would take too much space or be costly. They’re often used in retrofitted spaces or new additions. Each air handler has its own thermostat to ensure individual comfort. If you don’t plan to use a space continuously, you can save energy by turning the system off without affecting comfort levels in the rest of the home.

Ductless systems offer greater energy efficiency because they don’t have any thermal or air losses from ductwork that central systems do. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) mandates that a ductless mini split must meet the same minimum energy efficiency requirements as central forced-air HVAC systems do.

Heating with a Mini Split

In this climate, a ductless heat pump can provide year-round comfort. Look for a HSPF (heating season performance factor) rating that exceeds the current minimum rating of 8.2. One with a scroll compressor or that uses inverter technology will provide comfortable heat even during our coldest weather.

If you’d like more information about a ductless mini split, contact Roth Home & Cooling, providing Portland-area homeowners with outstanding HVAC services since 1976.

In Portland’s chilly, wet winters, a heating system that infuses your home with an even, draft-free warmth can be a real comfort. While radiant flooring is a good choice if you want this kind of warmth, it’s better suited to some situations than others.

Why Choose Radiant Floor Heating?

A forced-air system, such as a furnace, blows warm air into the room, which quickly rises to the ceiling. A radiant floor system gives off heat that directly warms people and furniture. This type of heat makes you feel warmer overall, allowing you to set a lower thermostat temperature to save energy.

No blowing air also means fewer airborne contaminants such as dust and mold spores, a plus if you experience allergies or asthma. With no motor or air moving through ducts, radiant floors are also quieter than forced-air systems. With no air vents to worry about, you can place your furniture and rugs anywhere.

Consider Your Options

Most homes with radiant flooring use either a hydronic (water) or electric design. A hydronic system uses tubes under the floor to circulate hot water produced by a boiler. The energy-efficiency of boiler heating makes hydronic systems suitable for heating the whole house. If the pipes aren’t installed during the home’s construction, however, the floor must be removed to install them.

In an electric system, pads embedded with electric heating cables are installed under the floor. Considering the relatively high cost of electric heating, these systems are best kept to a limited area, such as the bathroom. Some designs can be installed without removing the floor as long as the floor is accessible from underneath via the basement or crawl space.

Radiant flooring systems require a floor covering that holds and transmits heat well without suffering heat damage. Tile, stone, laminate, some types of vinyl flooring and even concrete are all options. You’ll want to avoid hardwood and thick carpet, though.

With the summer cooling season over, now is the time to think about how to keep your home warm this coming winter. Of course, you may still have summertime settings left over in your programmable thermostat. The following shows how you can reset your thermostat for optimal savings and heating comfort this winter.

Resetting Your Thermostat

You can start off by wiping your thermostat’s slate clean through a reset, which will clear all settings and return it back to its factory state. Thermostat controls tend to vary among manufacturers and models, so you may need to consult your thermostat’s user guide for more detailed steps.

Temperature Setbacks for Cooler Weather

Temperatures of around 68 to 72 degrees are not only comfortable with the right amount of clothing, but they’ll also help you keep your heating bills to a minimum. You can set your thermostat at these temperatures while you’re at home for maximum comfort.

Just as you would during the summer, you should program your thermostat to set itself back 10 to 15 degrees during periods when your home is empty (for example, while you and your loved ones are away at work or school). You can also use these setbacks as you sleep, since you’ll be in bed and won’t need as much heat from your HVAC system as you’d normally would while you’re up and about.

You’ll be able to save a significant percentage on your annual heating bills, especially if the setback period lasts for eight hours.