Having proper ventilation in your Portland area home is essential to maintaining optimal indoor air quality. Weatherization upgrades in modern homes often leave indoor environments too well-sealed, preventing a much needed influx of fresh air. If you feel your home has unnecessary odors, high humidity or a “stuffy” atmosphere, or you worry that home occupants are suffering unduly from allergies or respiratory issues, you likely need a whole-house ventilation system.

Whole-house ventilation systems exchange stale indoor air with fresh outdoor air. This is most effectively done when air is removed from rooms where moisture and odors are generated the most, such as your bathrooms, kitchen and laundry room, and when outdoor air is directed into all of your living spaces.

Whole-house venting systems come in four mechanical types: Exhaust, Supply, Balanced and Energy (or Heat) Recovery. Choosing which type is best for you depends on the regional climate, housing layout, budget and more. Once you have settled on a mechanical type, the next step is to ensure your chosen model has the following key qualities:

• Quiet Operation: Ventilation systems should improve your indoor comfort, not compromise it with excessive noise. Select a system with a fan noise rating of less than 1 Sone.
• Good Controls: The system should not be vulnerable to being inadvertently turned off. Choose a model with a programmable control that can be set depending on your family members’ activity times. The controls should be located somewhere where you can easily access them but where children can’t fool with them.
• Good Distribution: While the crux of the system is to introduce fresh outdoor air to your inside environment, this air must be well distributed to the places where you need it most. Choose a model with remote in-line fans that provide optimal air distribution.
• Filtration: You have spent much time weatherizing your home to prevent contaminants from coming in, and the last thing you want is for your ventilation system to work against you. Choose a model with high quality, easily accessible and easily maintained air filters.

To learn more about choosing the best system for your household, please contact our Portland area HVAC experts at (503) 673-6394!

Homeowners don’t have to wait for remodeling projects, or for old appliances to fail, before considering a new water heater for their home. Forward planning is a good idea, removing the potential to make rushed and costly mistakes. Water heater choices can be dizzying, so a little homework is a good idea.

Tankless or Storage:  Conventional storage (sometimes called “tank”) water heaters are available in sizes that typically range between 20 and 80 gallons. While this is tried-and-tested technology, most units require a considerable amount of space. A further downside is “standby heat loss,” the leaching of energy from already-heated water while it waits to be used.

On-demand (also known as “tankless”) water heaters raise the temperature of the water as it’s called for. Physically, these are comparatively small units, and standby losses are eliminated. However, their ability to deliver high volumes is limited, so they may not suit multiple-member households who run several faucets or appliances at the same time. Many homeowners address this issue by installing one whole-house tankless unit, supplemented by one or more point-of-use units at strategic locations.

Both tankless and storage tank water heaters come with the option of using gas or electricity as the energy source. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, a point that you’ll want to discuss with your HVAC technician or plumber.

Energy Efficiency: The government-backed Energy Star initiative suggests that “Heating water accounts for approximately 15 percent of a home’s energy use.” Investing in a high-efficiency water heater makes a lot of sense in that context; they can use as little as 50 percent of the energy consumed by standard equipment. Efficiency is referred to as the appliance’s Energy Factor, or EF, which is described as a numeric value on its EnergyGuide label. The higher that number, the more efficient the water heater’s performance will be.

Energy Star-certified appliances do tend to cost more at initial purchase, though, so the trade-off should be considered. Factor in your household’s size and typical consumption pattern.

Modern Features: Solar water heating is an attractive innovation, given that harnessing the sun’s energy can cut fuel consumption by as much as 90 percent. Solar water heaters are comparatively expensive to purchase, though. Further, the need to keep a conventional water heater installed and serviced, as a backup source, may be a discouraging factor.

Now you’ve done your homework, it’s time to have a well-informed conversation with a heating professional. In the Portland area, please contact Roth Home & Cooling with all of your questions.

Having balanced humidity is important, especially for Portland area homeowners who experience extreme moisture during summer and excessive dryness during winter. When indoor environments have too much or too little humidity, it can cause potential health problems, damaged possessions, and overall discomfort indoors. Maintaining balanced humidity plays a major role keeping a healthy and comfortable home.

Finding an Ideal Humidity

Humidity describes the amount of moisture in the surrounding air. If you are unsure or suspect you have problems arising from too much or too little humidity, consider the purchase of a hygrometer. This inexpensive device measures an area’s exact humidity. Experts recommend indoor humidity levels between 30 and 50 percent for ideal comfort and protection against mildew, mold and other humidity-related issues.

Balanced Humidity

You have several options to achieve a more balanced humidity in your household. If you are experiencing too much humidity, consider a dehumidifier to remove excess moisture in your indoor air. A stand-alone or portable dehumidifier can target smaller rooms or areas that see excessive moisture buildup, such as your kitchen or finished basement. If you think your entire house could benefit from reduced moisture, definitely consider a whole-house dehumidifier.

Sometimes, usually during the winter, the problem is the exact opposite; you don’t have enough humidity in your home, and family members complain about irritated throats and sore nasal passages. In this scenario, you want a humidifier to add moisture to your indoor air. Humidifiers can also be bought as portable or whole-house units.

However, before committing to either of these solutions, check to be sure your humidity (or lack thereof) is not the result of plumbing leaks, inadequate ventilation, or ground water seepage. Consider contacting a professional HVAC technician to assist you in finding the exact causes of your humidity issues. They will help you find and address the issue.

For more information about how to achieve more balanced humidity, or to learn about other HVAC products and solutions, contact your local experts at Roth Home & Cooling. Our full service technicians have been proudly providing superior service to Portland area residents since 1976.

Need to purchase a new air cleaner for your Portland area household? Selecting the right air cleaner can significantly improve your indoor air quality by reducing the dust, allergy and asthma triggers that build up throughout the seasons.

Not every air cleaner is the same, however. Many products redistribute allergens instead of reducing them, while others can actually make your symptoms worse. Often marketed as air fresheners, these “cleaners” generate ozone while in use. Ozone is a known lung irritant and can trigger and exacerbate respiratory problems.

For an air cleaner that actually improves your indoor air quality, look out for these three ratings or factors while shopping around:

Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR)

CADR describes the percentage of particles removed from a given space as measured by the cubic feet per minute (CFM) of air flow through an air cleaner’s filter. In other words, CADR illustrates how quickly an air filter can remove contaminants. It rates the following three contaminants: smoke (10 to 450), dust (10 to 400) and pollen (25 to 450). The higher a CADR value, the faster the air cleaner can filter the given contaminant.

High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA)

You might recognize the name HEPA from the type of filter used in vacuum cleaners to trap dust. Today, HEPA filters can also be found in stand-alone air cleaners and installed inside central heating and cooling systems (although they usually necessitate substantial system modifications to ensure smooth airflow). Air cleaners with HEPA filters are highly effective at trapping pollen, dust, dander and other trigger contaminants, though mid-range household air filters (MERV 8-12) also do a good job, without impeding airflow.

“Asthma and Allergy Friendly”

Put forth by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation, this new certification label was designed to highlight products that significantly reduce known allergens. To receive this certification, a product must undergo a strict evaluation of its air filter’s capacity per defined space, the fiber’s shedding potential, and the effectiveness of its seals.

For more information on choosing the best air cleaners for your household, or to learn about other ways of improving indoor air quality, please our HVAC experts at (503) 673-6394.

Whether you’re building a new home or remodeling your current house, selecting the right insulation for your home is an important part of maximizing your investment in efficient heating and cooling systems. Insulating R-value is one of the key factors you’ll rely on when choosing insulation for your home, but sometimes R-values aren’t as black and white as they seem. So what are R-values, why are they changeable, and how does this impact your insulation needs? Read on.

What Is an R-Value?

In terms of insulation, the R-value refers to a material’s ability to resist heat flow. The R in R-value stands for resistance – so, an insulation R-value of 4, for example, is four times more resistant to heat penetration than a wall without insulation. For insulation that can be installed in layers, like fiberglass batting, the R-value is “per thickness” so stacking two layers of insulation in your attic effectively doubles the insulating R-value of the material. In general, the higher the R-value, the more efficiently your heating and cooling systems can do their job and keep your home comfortable whatever the weather.

Do R-Values Vary?

The Federal Trade Commission has gone to great lengths to explain how insulation is tested and rated – the R-Value Rule was designed to help homeowners make educated decisions and protect them from erroneous marketing claims. However, variance in insulating R-values does happen and not necessarily because manufacturers are careless or embellishing their data.

One of the biggest contributing factors to fluctuations in insulating R-values is temperature. Some materials perform better the colder it gets, which means, for example, that all R-14 insulation is not created equal.

What do R-Value Variances Mean for Your Project?

Because our climate here in Portland is rarely extreme, the odds of the insulation you choose varying enough to make a difference to your home’s energy consumption are negligible. For advice, service or more information on how to maximize your home efficiency and comfort, please contact us at (503) 673-6394, the Portland area’s first choice for “total comfort.”

Heat pumps are marvelous home-comfort systems that, at the touch of a button, the flip of a switch or with programmable thermostat settings, shift between heating, cooling and defrost cycles. This ensures that your comfort and energy bills groove with outside temperatures no matter the daily or seasonal weather changes. Learn the basics of heat pump cycles to maximize system performance, comfort, and energy savings all year long.

Heat Pump Cycles

Heat pumps are engineered to harness the natural movement of heat energy from a warmer space to a cooler space by the principles of refrigeration – manipulating refrigerant under pressure changes. The basics of heat pump cycles for either cooling or heating are as follows:

In cooling mode, an air-source heat pump operates very much like a split-system air conditioner:

• The compressor compresses or “pumps” refrigerant through the system.
• As a result of changes in pressure, the refrigerant makes the inside evaporator coil get very cold, while the condenser coil becomes very hot.
• The blower motor fan or air handler blows air across the hot evaporator coils, cooling it about 15-20 degrees. The chilled air is then circulated through your home via ductwork.
• Meanwhile, the hot refrigerant is pumped back outside to the condensing unit where a fan blows air across the condenser coils. This extracts heat from the coils, which is then exhausted into the outside air. At this point, the refrigerant can run its cycle again, and through pressure changes, cool the evaporator coil.
• With a heat pump in heating mode, the reversing valve switches the flow of refrigerant between the condenser and evaporator coils. Heat is pulled from the outside air and then brought inside, via refrigerant, where it’s transferred to your indoor air and circulated through your ducts.

Defrost Cycle

In defrost mode, the reversing valve changes the direction of refrigerant so that the outside coil becomes hot. When ice accumulation has melted from the coil, the heat pump returns to normal heating cycle.

For more information about heat pump cycles or any HVAC questions and issues you may have for your Portland area home, please contact our professionals at Roth Home & Cooling today!

Portland may not be the coldest city in America, or get the most snow. However, even with Portland’s relatively mild winter, you still need an efficient heating system. Many people choose ductless mini splits because of their convenience and energy efficiency. However, you can improve upon your mini split’s performance to get even better results while trying to stay warm this winter.

• Make sure your house is sealed up right. You don’t want to have any of your warm air or heat energy escaping outside. A combination of caulking, weatherstripping and insulation are key to creating and maintaining a warm house.

• Even though we only get a modest amount of snow in the Portland area (except in higher elevations), you will still want to keep what snow you do get off of the outside condensing unit of your ductless mini split. Place a non-restrictive covering over it, perhaps a shed-like cover a couple feet above the top of the cabinet. If the outside unit is out in the open, it risks getting plugged with snow. When this happens, the snow or ice has to melt before it can create any heat. The appliance is just wasting energy on melting snow or ice instead of doing its job.

• Make sure the inside air handler(s) are installed and mounted according to manufacturer instructions. Different ductless mini splits have different instructions for installing the air handlers, with some advising installation near the ceiling, and others recommending closer to the floor.

• Finally, Portland temperatures usually don’t get below the high 20s. But it does happen. Ductless mini splits lose their heating efficiency as the temperature falls below freezing. Make sure you have an economical source of emergency heating to take over when the weather gets frigid for extended periods. Many homeowners use a dual-fuel system, where a natural gas furnace provides emergency backup, or even a first choice when gas prices are low.

Ductless mini splits are a great idea for warming up your Portland area home this winter. They’re more efficient, and a much greener option for heating your home. For more information about this type of system, or any other HVAC questions, please contact us at Roth Home & Cooling today.

With more people trying to make every aspect of their homes more energy and fuel efficient, the idea of a home energy audit is starting to become more appealing. On your own, you probably can find and fix some of those energy sinks in your home. But it’s not always possible to find all the problem spots by yourself. For most people, there are things going on in the home costing them money that they would never suspect.

When you order a professional home energy audit, an expert will test and assess your home in a comprehensive manner and then report how you can make your home more energy efficient. The energy audit will use both simple and sophisticated methods to find where energy and air is leaking from your home, and what specific actions you can take to reduce those energy losses. One of the most important assessments is the blower door test. It uses a powerful fan mounted in frame that when turned on, sucks air out of the house. Gauges then measure how quickly the pressure returns to normal in the home, as a way to measure your home’s airtightness and ascertain where air leaks are located.

Before getting a professional assessment of your energy use, try to figure just how you use energy in your home. Try asking yourself some of these questions:

• How often do you run your heating system or air conditioner?
• How many people are in your home?
• Are there rooms that get more use than others?
• What is the thermostat typically set to?
• How old are the appliances?
• Do you regularly schedule service for your HVAC equipment?

While it’s not absolutely necessary to answer all of these questions before your home energy audit, it can help the auditor to help you. By already knowing a thing or two about your energy use, your auditor can let you know some things you can change immediately to help you save on energy costs.

Of course, finding a proper energy auditor can represent a challenge if you don’t know where to look. If you’re not sure on how to go about ordering a home energy audit, please contact us at Roth Home & Cooling. We will help make your Portland area home as energy efficient as possible.

What’s your reason for looking into new low-flow toilets? It might be to save money, be more environmentally responsible, or meet building codes. Whatever the reason, rest assured that high efficiency low-flow toilets are an excellent addition to your home. Here are five tips for selecting an energy-efficient low-flow toilet:

• Decide between siphonic and wash-down technologies: The siphonic method is more common in North America. It “pulls” waste from the bowl. The smaller trapway this technology requires can result in more clogging. The wash-down method is common in Europe. It “pushes” waste from the bowl. The smaller amount of water and shape of the bowl causes more of the dreaded “skid marks,” but clogs are less common.
• Compare performance ratings: Dual-flush, wash-down and siphonic technologies vary, but performance is what really matters. Look up the results of different toilets you’re considering and compare how well they perform in accurately simulated real-world conditions.
• Consider efficiency: Since toilets account for approximately 30 percent of indoor water use, it’s obviously worthwhile to install more efficient fixtures. You’re making an upgrade anyway, so you might as well give your investment the opportunity to pay you back. A High Efficiency Toilet (HET) uses a maximum of 1.3 gallons per flush, which is 20 percent lower than the 1.6-gallon maximum for all newly manufactured toilets.
• Don’t let the price fool you: A more expensive toilet does not necessarily indicate a better performing toilet. Shop around and make your decision based on factors other than price. Fortunately, good old manufacturer competition helps keep prices down.
• Consider toilet design: If possible, “try out” a few low-flow toilets in person. Pay attention to the height, seat shape and rim design for what you think is most comfortable. Also keep your bathroom’s dimensions in mind. If you love the look and feel of an elongated bowl, make sure there’s enough distance between the bowl and the surrounding walls and fixtures in your bathroom.

For more information about choosing low-flow toilets for your Portland area home, please contact us today at (503) 673-6394. Our experience serving Oregon residents dates back to 1976.