Denver HVAC Repair - 24 Hour Heating and Cooling

Posted by HVAC in Denver

This video was put out by 24 Hour Heating & Cooling about their HVAC services offered in the Denver area. If you have problems with your furnace or heating system it is important to call a professional Denver HVAC company to ensure your repairs get done properly and for your safety as well.

Heating Your Home With Solar Energy

One of the cheapest, most environmentally friendly, and efficient ways to heat water is to use solar water heating. A new advance in the HVAC community is solar energy for heating homes. Even in the winter, the sun still bathes the earth with an incredible amount of free energy. The main limitation for solar heating is the climate. In cloudy areas like London, solar heating my not be the best choice. However HVAC in Denver is a great place for home solar energy because of the nearly year round appearance of the sun.

Solar heating is divided into active and passive systems. Passive systems use architecture and smart building design to allow the sun to heat a building. This is not the place for Denver heating companies because passive heating does not use any mechanical equipment.

Active heating collects either heat or solar energy in the form of electricity to heat a house. Then pumps or a HVAC system pushes the heat around the house from the stored heat source. A simple device that can heat a whole house is the non-concentrating flat plate collector. These collectors use a simple plate of some sort of heat-conductive material like metal to absorb solar heat which is then pumped through the house. If your furnace is broken, instead of calling your Denver furnace repair company, consider installing a flat panel solar heat collector. These devices are actually cheap and simple. Not only will you be saving the environment through reduced energy use, but the Denver heating devices pay for themselves after several years of service.

A little more advanced design is the concentrating collector, which uses mirrors or some other device to concentrate all the solar energy to heat a smaller absorbing area. The final and most technically advanced design is using photovoltaic cells to convert solar energy into electrical energy. These systems can be integrated into your house's whole power supply, so it will supply you with electricity for uses other than HVAC.

These solar cells are becoming increasingly efficient and user friendly. A common design has the cells hooked up to batteries to continue to provide power even when the sun is not out. Solar cells create DC current which must be converted to AC to run appliances in the western hemisphere. Any heating device worth the price should be able to continue providing heat at night and on overcast days. Otherwise, you can just use your solar heating device as a supplement, to reduce your energy bills on sunny days.

Controlling Indoor Air Pollution with HVAC Equipment

Pollution within structures is often many times worse than outside because pollutants do not have the whole atmosphere to be diluted in. Especially in manufacturing and heavy industry applications, proper ventilation is necessary to have workers on site. Workers are very vulnerable to indoor pollutants because they will receive continued exposure to them for the duration of their time on the job.

The first step in maintaining proper ventilation in a work environment is to identify all possible pollutant vectors, as well as all the inlet and outlet air ports in a building. Buildings are usually not near air-tight, so harmful fumes can enter or exit from many unusual of locations. Consult with a Denver HVAC company to identify all the natural and man-made ventilation points in your building. Natural points are windows, doors and leaky walls, while man made ventilation points are things like ventilation ducts and blow-off valves.

Not maintaining proper HVAC ventilation puts your company at risk for workplace injury and lawsuits. The first thing a possibly injured worker will do to determine if they are getting sick from improper building ventilation is to leave and see if the symptoms subside. There are a wide range of symptoms and possible indoor pollutants, so it is best to get and idea of what they are and how to address those pollutants from your Denver heating company instead of the local lawyer. Without a vigilant HVAC company or workforce to report problems, many dangerous gases are not noticed until a Denver furnace repair services technician notices something strange. Unfortunately, there are too many stories to count of Denver HVAC techs working in refineries with dangerously inadequate ventilation.

Not controlling these fumes can lead to "sick building syndrome" where workers feel lethargic and sick when at work. In public institutions like hospitals and schools, these symptoms must be taken very seriously because children's immune systems may have less natural ability to fight off toxins. A HVAC system with the central air hooked up to filters and scrubbers will take care of most harmful substances on non-industrial applications.

The major culprits to get people sick inside buildings are: tobacco smoke, burnt combustibles like exhaust smoke, biological pollutants like mold or viruses, volatile organics like solvents and jet fuel, and heavy metals like lead or any other smelter fumes.

How TXV thermostats work

If you are smart and want to save money, you have a programmable thermostat; a thermostat that monitors air temperature and controls heating and cooling digitally. Most Americans however, have an old fashioned thermostat with a wire thermostatic expansion valve. If your thermostat is round or square and says "Honeywell" you are in the same boat with most Americans with their wire thermostatic heating controls.

These thermostats work by monitoring the size of a coiled length of wire. As the temperature increases, the wire expands, and as it decreases, it contracts. Although not the most accurate, these thermostats have been a staple of Denver HVAC for over 50 years. Inside the actual cooling apparatus, there is another kind of thermostat that regulates the equipment. This is a thermostatic expansion valve, or TXV.

Instead of measuring the ambient air temperature, the expansion valve controls the refrigerant as it flows into, and boils out of the evaporator. This split separates the high and low pressure sides of the system. Although still mechanical, the TXV is a little more complex than the Honeywell on the wall, because it must balance three different forces: the bulb pressure trying to open the valve, the spring pressure which tries to keep it closed, and the evaporator pressure, which also forces the valve closed.

All certified Denver air conditioning services technicians learn these forces early on in their HVAC training. With the advent of central air conditioning and heat pumps, many thermostats ore more complex. However the simple thermostatic expansion valve will close if evaporator pressure increases and bulb pressure is stable, and will open if the bulb pressure increases.

Superheat is a Denver air conditioning term that refers to gaseous refrigerant that is still maintaining excess heat. This increases pressure on the bulb, which opens the valve to allow more refrigerant into the evaporator. A problem with your TXV will send your air conditioning out of line because the pressure differential essential to the cooling cycle cannot be maintained if the valve is stuck open or closed. A Denver HVAC technician can identify problems like this relatively quickly. The thermostats come from the factory already calibrated, but the settings may not match your local air conditioner use profile very well.

Replacing a Thermostat: Wiring Colors

Replacing thermostat by yourself without a Denver HVAC technician can be pretty harrowing if you do not hook up the wiring correctly. Inside of the thermostat there are several terminals which must hook up with the right wires. The R-terminal is the thermostat's power. R means Red, the Colorado heating repairman should have red wires going to this terminal. This power comes from the transformer. The transformer is usually in the condensing unit or the air handler in a split system. Because they are supplying power, it is a good idea to kill the power to both the condenser and the air handler before working on the thermostat.

The RC terminal is the power for cooling. Some large HVAC systems have two transformers, one for cooling and one for heat. In such a case, the power from the ac system goes to the thermostat terminal. A jumper can be installed between RC and RH for a single transformer heating and cooling system. The RC terminal is also red.

The RH terminal is the heating power-in. This is also red and can be jumped to the RC.

The Y terminal is yellow and goes to the compressor relay. Some Denver HVAC specialists use a terminal board strip on the air handler control board which makes splices not needed. Y2 is usually light blue and is the code for a second stage cooler. If you do have two compressors, both should work off the same thermostat. Most Denver heating and air companies do not need the cooling of a two stage company.

W is the heating terminal. W is for white terminal. This should go directly to your heating source, whether it be a furnace or boiler. W2 is for second stage heat and is usually brown. This is for gas furnaces with low and high settings. Heat pumps use W2 for auxiliary heat.

G is for green and goes to the indoor blower fan relay.

C is for Common, and does not have a specific color although black is seen frequently. For digital thermostats that consume power, the common wire is necessary to complete the 24 volt circuit.

Orange "O" and "B" Blue are for heat pumps. Rheem and Ruud heat pumps use the B terminal for the cooling reversing valve. Other HVAC manufacturers use the O terminal. Trane, Lennox, Goodman, Ducane, Heil, Carrier, Fedders, Amana, and Janitrol are normally hooked up to the O terminal by HVAC contractors in Denver.

E is for emergency heating. This has no standard color but should be wired to the heating relay or E terminal strip board.

S1 and S2 are for outdoor air sensors. This has no standard color, but should use a shielded wire to reduce interference and the possibility of water damage from outside.

Warning: These colors are the defaults. The person wiring the thermostat could have used unconventional color coding.