The effectiveness of your HVAC system is important during every season of the year, but winter is one of the worst times to encounter a problem. While a summer outage in your cooling system can be mitigated with fans and iced lemonade, in the winter, there may not be enough blankets and sleeves to warm…
It’s not over yet! Technically, we are only five weeks into the winter season, so it’s helpful to talk about safety for the remainder of the season. There are so many things to look forward to during the winter months. Beautiful snowfalls. Holiday relaxation. Delicious food. But there are also many things to be careful…
Each year, more than 65,000 home fires occur due to heating equipment use. Portable electric space heaters are a convenient source of heat to supplement your central HVAC system. Unfortunately, they can pose significant fire and electrical hazard if not used properly and safely. The Electrical Safety Foundation International provides a list of points to…
Chestnuts roasting in the crackling flames of your cozy fireplace. There’s nothing that more captures the essence of the winter season than a beautiful fireplace that your family can enjoy on a cold night. Aside from the heating potential and electricity savings, there is just something about a blazing hearth that screams “Home.” There are definitely…
Sara Mosle is an educator, and she spent her first year as a public school teacher in Manhattan, specifically at P.S. 98. Even in this day and age, this facility did not have air conditioning. Because many NYC schools remain in session all the way through the end of June, she experienced first-hand the struggles…
In our previous blog post, we discussed some of the inventions that have made our modern world the marvel it is today. We touched on air conditioning, the plow, the gramophone, and even mechanized looms. The last thing mentioned, by writer Tim Harford and journalist David Thompson, was this elusive idea called: “The Welfare State”…
How AC invented the modern world History of Air Conditioning – Back in August, we talked on this blog about how Willis Carrier invented the air conditioning unit as a way to control humidity in a printing warehouse during a New England heatwave. In a new book by Tim Harford, titled Fifty Inventions That Shaped…
Two years ago, light was shed on a situation in Maryland. The Baltimore County school system came under fire for a lack of air conditioning in many of the public school system’s facilities. At that time, Amber Budd, a then-freshman at Dulaney High School said, “It’s really difficult because the heat gets to us and…
Air conditioners are making a shift. Many air conditioners use a refrigerant called chlorodifluoromethane, though it is often known better by the generic term R-22 or the brand name Freon. Unfortunately for many homeowners, this chemical is being phased out of use under something called the Montreal Protocol. By the year 2020, production of R-22…
Earlier on this blog, we discussed how school districts, at elementary schools and even colleges, have the complete freedom to make the decision to continue with classes or cancel classes if a power outage occurs and knocks out the air conditioning and other climate control measures. It seems there is not a lot of discussion…
