What’s wrong with that picture? If you can’t tell, click on it and have a closer look…

There is no clearance around the heating ductwork!

There has been quite a few bone head things that we have found around the house since we moved in, but I think that this one takes the cake as the most foolish and potentially dangerous. Unfortunately it is something that our inspector did not pick up on, and something that I was not aware of.

We had a contractor come through to look at possibly doing some work on one of the rooms in our house. He took one look at the cardboard taped around the duct work and told me that I needed to take it off right away, or at least before we fired up the furnace again for winter.

I was told that for safety there needs to be at least two inches (2”) of open space / clearance around the ductwork. For some reason the cardboard in our basement was actually taped to the duct work!

The reason why there needs to be the 2” of clearance around the ductwork is so if there is a catastrophic failure or problem with the furnace and the ductwork heats up dramatically there is a better chance of ductwork not catching the house on fire! The cardboard would provide a perfect fire starter, don’t you think?

Maybe the previous owner had put the cardboard on to prevent noise transfer or something, but I don’t think it’s worth the safety risk, so the cardboard came off tonight…

I was reading a recent edition of Popular Science and came across a way to use up to 10% less power on your window box air-conditioner.

To save up to 10% on the cost of running your window air-conditioner you should keep the air-conditioner out of direct sunlight. There are a few ways that you can do this:

1. Install it on the side of the house that doesn’t get any sun
2. Plant bushes or trees to shade the air-conditioner from the sun
3. Build a shade for the air-conditioner

One thing that you need to be aware of when doing any of the three options above is to make sure that you don’t block the airflow around the air conditioner.

When not in use Air Conditioners are an easy way for hot or cold air to escape from the house. In Australia we were usually worried about the cold air getting out, here in Canada it’s more of a worry of the cold air (-23C today) getting in.

Since I was up on the bench top checking out and closing the vents on the air conditioner I also had a look at the filter. Part of me wonders if that last owners even knew that it had a filter, given how dirty it was.

A dirty, clogged or blocked air filter on an air conditioner can be an energy hog and a safety risk. The air conditioner needs to work harder to draw air into the machine, which causes extra heat and an electricity drain.

To clean our filter, which you can see above, I’m going to hook up the vacuum cleaner and suck off the dry dust. If you are in a humid climate you may need to look at using bleach or vinegar to clean the filter if mould has started to form on the filter. Make sure to let it dry fully if you’re going to do that, as you don’t want to be drawing the fumes, or any liquid into the air conditioner.

Recently I’ve been living next to someone who I’m convinced sets their air conditioner to about 20C (70F). I’ve heard it turn on when I have been very comfortable both inside and outside. At the same time I reckon that they probably have their heater set not much below that, so they always stay right at the same temperature year round.

The recommended temperature to set your air conditioner to is 25C (77F). This is the best setting to balance the economy of running your air conditioner and setting it to  a comfortable temperature.

Some people find 25C to be too warm to set the air conditioner to. If that’s the case for you then running a fan is an economical solution to help augment cooling provided by the air conditioner. My personal preference is to run the fans on high with the air conditioner set to 25C rather than setting the air conditioner any cooler then that.

I have a few friends who really crank down their air conditioner at night because the like to be cold when they sleep. To help us sleep at night in the summer we leave the air conditioner at 25C, set the fan to high and remove the duvet from our duvet cover, so we just sleep with the duvet cover. This helps us to sleep at a comfortable temperature, without increasing the costs to cool the house.

What temperature do you have your air conditioner set to and what do you do to make your air conditioner cool your house more effectively?