Wednesday 12 June 2013

With the winters not so far away, it's perhaps the ideal time to step up  and kick start the planning and preparations on how to stay cozy, warm and comfortable during the upcoming colder months of the year. One of the simplest way of achieving the same is by installing a nice small gas furnace in your household. Not only are they highly energy-efficient, but at the same time gas furnaces have proved to be more than useful in conditioning air effectively throughout the perimeter of the room. Though the experts recommend hiring the services of a professional technician to install such furnaces, installing a gas furnace is pretty simple to be honest that can be managed single- handedly provided you understand the technical aspects associated with the process. Here’s a  short guide explaining how to proceed with the installation process.



      1)-      The first and most important thing is never every experiment with the gas yourself. Do not turn it on/off or connect it to the furnace before the furnace installation is completely over. Remember that gas can be really very dangerous and therefore it should only be handled by someone who is a professional.

      2)-      Before purchasing a gas furnace, what needs to be done is to evaluate the room dimensions, available space and your specific needs. Different furnaces are presently coming in a wide range of sizes especially designed to satisfy particular area requirements. Therefore, it is up to you to understand your requirements and manage to buy the furnace that ideally suits your individual requirements.

      3)-      Carefully check your wiring and duct work and address even the slightest irregularities found within the system.

      4)-      After starting with the installation process, the total process should preferably be completed at a time without any break ups. Therefore, before installing, make sure that you have purchased all the necessary tools and accessories and have them right in front of you. Almost every gas furnace has its own user manual containing a list of supportive tools required for installation. So, just try to ensure you that nothing goes missing midway through the process.

      5)-      After you have accumulated all the required tools, it’s time to get the furnace installed. Before you start, ensure that all your gas connections are switched off.

      6)-      Ideally, a gas furnace should always be installed in the inner parts of the exterior wall of a room to make sure that the gas lines stay outside away from the room.

      7)-      Coming to drilling holes in the walls for venting purposes, remember to make the holes level. Remember that if the holes are wrongly spaced or slant, rain water can easily move across the duct and hurt the pipelines deadly. Along with this, try not to affix the furnace to the wall directly. Rather, leave at least some space between the furnace and the wall.
Air handlers are a common electrical gadget that is used for circulating warm or cold air throughout the rooms. In most of the cases, people tend to combine it with an air conditioner unit to effectively bring down the room temperature but apart from this, it can also be used with a pump to supply heat in the cold countries. For the first time users, below is a precise step by step air handler installation guide for your reference:


      1)-      Try to position the handler centrally so as to reduce the overall length of the copper duct required for refrigerant tubing. Please go through the user manual thoroughly and ensure that you obey the safety precautions listed in the manual including complying with the proposed clearance space from the combustible elements. Also, leave at least 25 inch clearance right in front of your cabinet for easy access.

       2)-      Next, install both supply and return air ductwork in strict accordance with the manufacturer’s suggestion.

       3)-      Using an aviation snip, make a small cut near the lower end of the cabinet to make way for the return duct to get connected with the handler for proper upflow installation.

      4)-      Make a hole in the floor or wall. Tightly fix the return air grilles using screws. Next, fix the return air partition and carefully terminate the rectangular duct horizontally to bring in fresh air. Connect this duct to the cabinet opening.

      5)-      Make an L-shaped cut at the end of the horizontal duct and connect the air filter rack with the return air partition made in step 3. Interconnect this L-cut to the rack. Affix the ducts starting from the topmost elbow to the one immediately below.

      6)-      Fix a metal plenum just over the handler blower compartment. Make a small incision in the body of the plenum for proper take off.

      7)-      Hold the inner side of the duct and carefully install a tab at the end of the duct. Next, place three screws at approximately equal distances from each other. The installation of the take off shall enable you to connect a bigger extended plenum having multiple rectangular ducts. This way, try to cover the total service area.

      8)-      Attach the round shaped ducts to this extended plenum which in turn will help in supplying conditioned air to all parts of the room. Make a few small holes in this plenum and install a few collars similar to the way takeoffs were installed earlier. Next, cut another small hole either in the wall or floor to install a register. Finally, join all the connections using a foil-backed tape.

      9)-      Get the refrigerant lines connected.

      10)-   Following the national, state as well as local electrical codes, install an electrical circuit breaker.

      11)-   Fix a thermostat equipped with digital or programmable capabilities depending on the required specifications. The thermostat should preferably be placed in a closed area away from direct sunlight, doors and windows.

      12)-   Connect the thermostat to the air handler using a low voltage copper wiring.

      13)-   Install tubing at the drain pan and carefully get it routed to the handler floor drain. Pitch the line .25 inches per foot for proper drainage.

      14)-   Finally, make the necessary adjustments to the thermostat and control panel and conduct a trial run of the air handler.
A heat pump is electrical equipment that gathers heat from various external sources and transfers the gathered heat uniformly throughout the area of the room inside. Conversely, in the warm countries, a heat pump can also serve as a cooler by sucking the heat from the rooms and transfer it outside therefore bringing down the temperature of the room. It’s solely the user’s discretion whether to use it as a heater or cooler but whichever way you go, these units are rated to be one of the most efficient ways of temperature conditioning. So, if you still do not have one installed in your household, it's time you get one installed not only to make your house comfortable but in the process bring down your monthly power expenses at least by thirty to forty percent. Here’s a step by step heat pump installation guide that should hopefully help you through the installation process:

       
     1- Select a proper place where the heat pump is going to get installed and try to leave at least ten inch gap from the exterior walls of your room. Next, stand facing the heat pump and leave minimum eighteen inch space at the rear end of the unit for service access. Try to leave near about 35-40 inches vacant space at the top to ensure that nothing manages to choke the air vents.

      2- Position the heat pump carefully on a thick four inch concrete slab making sure that the slab is not directly connected to the house. Focus on making a uniform slab level and get it surrounded with gravel thereby eliminating the fears of drainage related problems from the pump. Keep a three inch clearance from the pump coil at the bottom for uninterrupted drainage of the frost buildup.

      3- Mount the air handler inside the house. In case you prefer to install the pump and handler in two places separated by fifteen feet or more, remember not to lift the suction lines and coolant too high.

      4- Get the vapor gas channel of the heat pump properly insulated using a .5 inch thick insulation cover throughout the body of the tubing. After the insulation process is over, remember to cover either ends of the tubing so that any impurities or debris does not manage to get past into the tubing.

      5- Join the outdoor unit of the heat pump to the internal unit. Open the valve cap using an Allen wrench, slowly insert the Cu-tubing and get the valve cap replaced. Finally, affix the cap tightly and slowly seal in back into place ensuring the tubing does not get twisted or folded.

      6- Allow a uniform dissipation of pressure from the coil indoor while perforating the copper caps. Connect this tubing to the internal unit to ensure that coil stays dry devoid of any moisture.
Purchasing a suitable air conditioning system for a household itself demands a lot of consideration. However, after a final decision is taken, the next big thing that needs to be done is to get the AC installed in a way that can benefit you the most. Air conditioner installation is nothing too complicated but is certainly not a walk in the park either. There are certain points following which users can hope to get the very best out of the newly installed air conditioners. Before getting into the technical aspects of installation, lets broadly categorize the key aspects of air conditioner installation that should be addressed with additional care.

Proper connection and Placement are the two most vital factors that should be set dead right to ensure the desired cooling effect. So, here’s a few simple Air conditioner installation guides that should help you through the installation process:
1.       
      1- Installation Height: The heights at which the air conditioner has to be installed differs for window and split varieties of air conditioning system. Therefore, it’s extremely important to set a proper height without which the efficiency of the device is bound to take a toll. Experimentally, it has been found that for a room of about ten foot height, the ideal cooling performance can be achieved from a split air conditioner by having it installed at a height of somewhere around 7-8 fts. On the contrary, the window AC’s should preferably be housed much lower, about four feet above base level.

      2- Never fix the machine in close proximity to the wall to prevent heat dissipation. A distance of around nine hundred millimeter and more is rated to be ideal.

      3- Place Choice:  Strategic positioning of the air conditioner is extremely important to ensure uniform spreading of cool air throughout the periphery of the room. At the same time, the selected place must provide optimum ventilation without any blockage or obstacles to the air flow.

      4- Under any circumstances, air conditioners should never be exposed to rain, heat, vapors or sunlight. Along with this, additional stress has to be laid on creating a proper drain channel for uninterrupted drainage of condensed water.

      5- Apart from this, the net weight as well as the vibration of the unit has to be withstood without compromising on safety and security.

To conclude, if the installation process is not executed in an appropriate fashion, it can easily lead to far lesser and improper cooling of your room. In the process, the comfort level is going to fall by a considerable extent as the circulation of conditioned air within the area of the room is also going to be affected drastically.