CarbonFeet

More and more people are discovering the benefits of a home air conditioning system, because prices have dropped in relation to to wages over recent years. However, most people’s approach is ‘out of sight, out of mind’. That is, until they get home from work on a sweltering hot summer’s afternoon and the air con does not work.

The most frequent cause of this is years of no maintenance. The only way that you will get the most from air conditioning systems, as with any machine, is to maintain it according to the manufacturer’s recommended agenda and get it checked over by a specialist every two or three years, whatever the manual says. You cannot completely eliminate the professional check up, but you can carry out the basic maintenance yourself, which will save you at least two years of charges.

Here then are my most essential basic air conditioning maintenance tips.

If you have a central air conditioner, clean or replace the air filter roughly once a month during the hot weather period. This will help extend the life of your air conditioning apparatus, raise its level of efficiency (thereby reducing running costs) and improve the quality of the air in your home.

The two standard kinds of air filters are the washable steel mesh form and the woven fibre glass type which is not reusable. These filters slide into the ductwork or blower compartment. You can further improve the performance of your central air conditioner by clearing all the grass, bushes, flowers and picking up the debris from around the outside compressor box.

Furthermore, if the outdoor apparatus is ever in full sunlight when it is in use, put up a small structure like a simple lean-to over it to keep it in the shade. Then it will not have to labour so hard. It will also keep the snow and rain out of it throughout the winter. Get both the internal and external units checked by an expert every two years.

Other basic air conditioning maintenance tips are to take the ‘top’ off your blower unit before the start of the summer and grant it some attention. Gently scrape the build-up of dust and grease on the blades of the fan, Then lightly oil the fan’s shaft and bearings so that it will turn more freely. If your fan or blower is belt driven, check the fan belt for wear, tension and alignment. Rectify as you would for a car.

The motors on most modern blower units are completely sealed and self-lubricating, but the older ones have an oil reservoir which has to be refilled every year. Check that, clean the sump, if you have one and fill up with clean oil.

You can also scrub the coil, which is a loop of metal tubing. Vacuum it and then lightly clean it with a tooth brush and something like methylated spirits in order to degrease it. Mop up any spillage. All of these jobs can be applied to the outside unit too, because it too has a fan and a coil. Clean any cobwebs from the case’s vents too.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with central air conditioning systems. If you are interested in Home Air Conditioning Systems, please click through to our site.

What do you associate with the plethora of high tech electronic gadgets currently available on the High Street? Different people will have different perceptions. Many will think that they’re overpriced and a waste of money, others will think that they’re cool and trendy. A lot of people will find them complicated and quite possible dread the thought of having to use the things. However, it’s almost certain that few people, if any, would consider that new electronic devices could actually be good for the environment – but some of them can, depending upon how you use them.

One possible example would be digital photo frames. These have increased greatly in popularity over the last couple of years or so. Competition has now driven prices down to the point where you can buy a digital frame for around about the same price that you would have to pay for a traditional frame anyway. Digital frames have a number of perceived benefits, one of these is the fact that you can use a single frame to store and display hundreds, sometimes thousands, of photos.

A lot will depend upon how many photographs you take in an average year, but if you are in the habit of getting a bit snap happy then using a digital frame to display your photo collection could have a positive environmental impact. Whether you avoid having photos printed out at a processing lab or if you just print out less on your computer printer you will wind up using fewer materials.

The current hot gadget – the e-book reader – is another good example. E-book readers have been available for a fair old time now, but their popularity absolutely rocketed during the course of 2009. It looks like they will become ever more common in the immediate future. At the moment, the Amazon Kindle reader is the market leader. Sony are in second place and have an established pedigree having been selling readers since 2006.

Every year, the U.S. book, magazine and newspaper sector requires 125 million trees to be felled. In addition to the lumber, large amounts of water, chemicals, dyes and energy are also needed to satisfy our reading habits. Further, because books are, of course, a physical product, they require to be shipped from the publishers to the book store – by road usually. It’s also worth noting that the carbon footprint of the average book is doubled when the customer gets in their car, drives to the store, buys their book and then drives home again.

E-books don’t need paper or ink to produce them. Neither are they a physical product – they can be delivered by internet download.

Of course, as both e-book readers and digital photo frames are themselves physical products, they do require both materials and energy for their production. They also need to be delivered to the retail outlet or direct to the end user. Even so, studies have shown that, even when the materials consumed are offset against the savings in paper, energy, ink etc. that such devices can be better for the environment (though it will depend, to a certain extent, on how many books you read or how many photos you process each year).

Discover the Amazon Kindle reader and find out how easy it is to save money by downloading free Kindle books – direct from Amazon’s Kindle store!