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12 Signs Your Furnace Needs Replaced

Newark residents know that Delaware winters can be harsh. That’s why having a properly functioning home heating system is so important. If the cold months are fast approaching, you’ll want to make sure that your furnace is ready to handle the burden of heating your home and keeping you and your family comfortable. Many small malfunctions can be easily fixed, but there’s always the chance that your furnace might need to be replaced entirely.

Here are some ways you should be aware of and what they might mean:

12. Unexplainable increases in energy bills

Anytime you notice a bump in your energy bill that you can’t explain away through intentionally increased usage, it’s a good indicator that something is wrong. Sometimes, too many windows left open while the furnace or air conditioning unit is running is the culprit. However, if simple mistakes like that have been ruled out and your energy bill is astronomical during the winter months, you may be facing problems with your furnace. If the furnace has a malfunctioning part, has accumulated too much dust and dirt, or isn’t properly lubricated, it could be working twice as hard for half the result, causing your energy usage to drastically increase. If you find yourself in this situation, make an appointment with an HVAC technician as soon as possible to find out if a furnace replacement is in order.

11. Unusual noises.

If your furnace seems to be louder than normal while running, there may be an internal malfunction that is causing it to work harder than it should. This could also be the cause of any unfamiliar hums, rattles, or buzzes that develop. Sounds like these could even mean something as serious as a leak in your furnace.

10. Visible signs of age.

Regularly inspecting your furnace is extremely important because you won’t want to miss any visible indications that your furnace needs extra attention. If you see rust developing, notice any cracks or discoloration, or see anything at all abnormal anywhere on your furnace, there may be a functionality issue due to typical wear and tear.

9. Starting and stopping.

Furnaces are built to send hot air throughout your home in cycles. If the regular cycles you’re accustomed to are being cut short somehow, there may be a malfunction in your furnace causing this to happen. Usually, furnace systems will stop and start when the heat sensor is dirty or when the fan motor is on its last legs.

8. Uneven heating patterns.

You may realize that certain rooms of your home receive less heat than others, or even no heat at all, while your furnace is running. If this is the case, your furnace may be having difficulty cycling heat evenly and may need to be replaced.

7. Excessive dryness or moisture.

If you notice that the air cycling throughout your home feels overly dry or you’re finding moisture buildup on the walls, windows, or ceilings, your furnace could be at fault. Dry air could be caused by a variety of issues involving the procession of air from the furnace to the rest of the house, while moist air is usually a sign of insufficient airflow from room to room. Though both issues could also involve the vents themselves, a faulty furnace could be at the root of the problem.

6. A dirty house.

The noticeable buildup of dirt, dust, soot, or dander throughout your home, while the furnace is in use, could be a major sign that your furnace needs cleaning or is even unable to filter the air passing through.

5. Signs of water leakage.

If you find pooling water under or near your furnace, the first step is to make sure you know exactly where the water is coming from; many people keep their furnaces and air conditioning units in the same area or even have them combined, so it’s possible that the leak could be coming from the AC unit or even another nearby source. Water leaks from AC units can often be a relatively easy fix, but if the water is confirmed to be leaking from the furnace, you may want to seek a professional’s opinion on whether or not the furnace is still safe for use.

4. Animal interference.

Many homeowners have at least some level of experience with rodent activity in their home, but some may not realize how much damage small animals like rats, mice, and squirrels can do to a home’s mechanical function. When checking your furnace for visible exterior damage, keep an eye out for any foreign material that could function as a nest or anything that resembles animal droppings. Also, check any wires for signs of chewing or scratching. If you don’t see any explicit signs of animal activity but notice a strange or unpleasant smell, you may have a different kind of animal problem. Thoroughly check your vents and vent hoods for any deceased animals or other signs of animal presence.

3. Overly frequent repairs.

Think back on the last few years. Have you hired an HVAC technician to fix your home heating system more than a few times and yet you’re still experiencing constant problems? You may be working with a furnace that is simply too old to function properly, no matter how many times you attempt to fix it. Most furnaces last for about 20 years, provided that the homeowner has taken good care of it and performed routine maintenance. If your furnace is approaching that age or you’re not even sure how old your furnace is, it might be a sign that a replacement is in order.

2. Constant adjustment of the thermostat.

Maybe you’ve noticed that no matter how many times you check that you set the thermostat correctly, you’re not getting the temperature you want. Maybe it’s only off by a few degrees, or maybe your house can’t seem to get anywhere above freezing cold in the dead of winter. Whether your thermostat is digital or mechanical, if you find yourself constantly adjusting its reading, the problem could stem back to your furnace’s inability to meet your home’s heating needs.

1. Yellow burner flame.

Many furnace models include a peephole for owners to check the color of the burner flame. If not, make sure to open the door carefully. If the flame is mostly blue, the burner is functioning properly. If the flame is mostly yellow, this means that the natural gas within the furnace isn’t burning off entirely as it should, and carbon monoxide is being produced. CO production in furnaces is often caused by a dirty burner or improper venting and can indicate a potential carbon monoxide leak. This can be very bad news as CO poisoning is no laughing matter. Other commons signs of carbon monoxide presence to look out for are:

  • Soot near or around the furnace
  • Stagnant air in the chimney
  • Excessive moisture present on cold surfaces within the house i.e. windows, walls, etc.
  • Rusty flue pipes or other nearby pipes

In addition to checking your furnace regularly for signs of carbon monoxide production, all homeowners should install a carbon monoxide detector. The gas is entirely odorless and tasteless, so a CO detector could be the only way to identify and halt a carbon monoxide leak. Common signs of carbon monoxide poisoning include frequent headaches, burning in the nose and eyes, disorientation, nausea, and other flu-like symptoms.

Maintaining a safe and functional furnace isn’t only important for keeping your home comfortably warm during Newark winters. Proper furnace maintenance can also prevent excessively high energy bills and unpleasant changes to air quality in your home while saving you from serious life-threatening issues such as carbon monoxide poisoning and even fires.

Are You Our Neighbor? Boulden Brothers Proudly Serves near Newark, DE

If you’re experiencing one or more of the common furnace problems listed above, it may be time to replace your unit entirely. Even if you’re still unsure about the source of your home heating issues or if you don’t know how to properly care for your furnace year-round, Boulden Brothers are here to help.

Boulden Brothers are proud to offer exceptional customer service for all your heating and cooling needs as well as professional and efficient installation of new devices on your preferred timeline. We understand how intense Delaware winters can be, which is why you won’t be kept waiting for your new furnace. For top-of-the-line heating and cooling systems and customer service that makes you feel like family, give Boulden Brothers a call today.

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Filed Under: Heating, HVAC

Why Isn’t My Furnace Working?

Potential Reasons Your Furnace Isn’t Working

It’s winter, and even with this year’s mild winter, we’ve already had a few cold snaps and freezing temperatures. If your furnace stops in the middle of winter, you don’t want it to stay down for very long. Especially if it’s something that you can take care of yourself. There are two very basic types of problems with a furnace. The first is that it won’t turn on at all, and the second is that it won’t function properly when it is on.  Whether you want to call them signs or problems, today we have the 3 most common ways for you to tell that something has gone wrong.

Furnace Start Failure

According to this website, The single most obvious problem with a furnace is that won’t even turn on. Whether you fail to hear the fan kick in, the sound of energy running to the blower motor, the noise of gas to the furnace, or the roar of flames from the furnace itself, a dead furnace is just that: dead. Unfortunately, a non-functional furnace can be caused by any of a large number of failure points. Common problems come from the thermostat, feeds lines, circuit breaker, and pilot light.

The first thing you should check is power. Examine your circuit breaker box and make sure the circuit labeled for heating hasn’t been tripped. If it has, reset it and wait to see if it re-trips or the furnace engages. You should also check to see if your furnace has an emergency cut-off switch at the furnace. Make sure that isn’t turned off.

Second: check the thermostat. Is it set properly? Is it correctly reading the room temperature? If the answer is yes to both questions the thermostat may be broken. It could be a switch issue or it could simply be failing to send a control signal to your furnace. Either way, it should be replaced. If the thermostat is working and you’re simply receiving cold air, then you likely have a furnace heat problem.

Finally, check the pilot light and fuel source. If you have an electric furnace there could be a problem with the heating element. If you’re getting cold air, it’s because there’s nothing to heat it.

Breaker Trips

Your furnace should be the only item on its breaker circuit. This means any problems with the breaker are with the heating system or the breaker itself. More than likely the furnace blower fan motor is overdrawing because it’s overworked. When this happens, the power draw increases, heating up the breaker and causing a trip.

There are three possible causes for an overworked fan motor. The furnace filter is dirty and causing an air blockage, the ventilation ducts need to be cleaned, or the motor itself needs to be maintained.  If you had proper maintenance done on the furnace it’s likely that the ventilation ducts are simply too dirty to push air out into the house effectively. Otherwise, we’d advise having an electrician check the wiring and breaker panel for faults.

Furnace Fan Activates with Cold Air

Sometimes you’ll find that the fan kicks in but the vent only seems to deliver cold air. The first thing you should do is make sure that your thermostat is set to “Auto” rather than “Fan.” This is a common mistake and it’s easily fixed.  The Fan setting leaves the blower fan running to circulate the air, but it does not activate the furnace heating.

Other reasons involve furnace fuel.  If you can, check the pilot light to make sure it’s on. If you hear the sound of fuel but don’t see a pilot light, shut down your furnace and call a technician immediately. If the pilot light is active but you still aren’t getting heat, check your fuel level.

Problems with the pilot light and fuel systems should be worked on by a professional. If you use an electric furnace that isn’t heating, you’ll need to consult a furnace electrician. Electric furnaces require a great deal of power for heating, creating dangerous conditions for the untrained.

Trust Delaware’s Expert Plumbing Professionals

Of course, there are other signs you should be on the lookout for. Strange smells or sounds when the furnace is running can hint at further problems. If your furnace itself is beeping or making noise, then it definitely needs your attention. While we always hope that nothing will go wrong, it’s nice to know the causes of these common problems and when we can fix them. Give us a call at (302) 368-3848 for any of your Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania home service needs — plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and more! Call us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer any questions you might have. For more expert tips on maintaining a safe and efficient home, visit us on our website, Facebook, Twitter.

Filed Under: Heating, HVAC

Why You Should Leave Vents and Registers Open

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Air Conditioner Is Not WorkingWhen it comes to saving money on heating every year, we hear the same things.  But, while “put on a sweater and lower the thermostat” is good, “close vents in unused rooms” is more damaging than it’s worth.  Sadly, it seems like common sense so we find people closing vents and registers in the hope of saving a few dollars every month.  With heating and cooling making up roughly half of our energy bill every month, you’d think that every bit helps.  But what if the dollars you save just get put towards future repairs caused by the attempted savings?

Basic Ventilation Principles

First, how does ventilation actually work in your home?  Houses are mostly closed systems, with controlled filtration that keeps the air clean and clear.  As a closed system, this means that nothing is moving the air internally.  A blower fan works to circulate the air throughout your home.  The moving air redistributes heat by either dumping it into condenser coils or picking it up from the furnace.

There are two basic types of motors used in these fans.  One is a variable motor that can adjust itself based on the amount of pressure it’s seeing, while the other runs at the same rate regardless of external conditions.  Because the second one is less complicated and slightly cheaper, it’s more common in homes.  Unfortunately, this means that your home, more than likely, is going to be working harder to move air through a smaller space.

Air moves in a cycle, as it leaves a space, more air replaces it.  This is why your home uses a system of vents and registers to move air through the building.  When you close an air vent, you reduce the number of avenues available to moving air, restricting flow.

Pressure Problems

This moves us to the major problem with closing air vents: pressure.  From the ducts to the climate control unit, whether it’s heating or air conditioning, your system has been sized to suit the needs of your home.  The amount of air that your blower fan can move is suited to the flow rate of your ventilation system and the size of your home.

The reduction in airflow is a problem for effective heating.  On the standard motor used in most household blower fans, that increased pressure means that air flows at a lower rate, leading to problems with heat transfer.  Additionally, the increased pressure means a higher chance for hot air to escape through existing leaks or to cause new leaks in your ducting.

Of course, if you have a variable motor, the reduced airflow is not a problem.  The fan motor will ramp up, increasing airflow against the additional pressure.  But this comes at the cost of the energy you might have saved otherwise.  Variable motors work themselves harder to make up for the decrease in airflow, decreasing lifespan, and costing you more in energy to operate the fan.

Heat Backup

We mentioned that one drawback to closing vents is a problem with heat exchange.  When airflow is reduced, the air is not refreshed quickly enough for proper heat exchange to take place.  Hot air moves into the room at a lower rate, leading to colder rooms or longer furnaces on-cycles.  In a heating system, the reduced flow rate means that the temperature of the heat exchanger will increase as the air around it stays hotter for longer.  That increase in heat can lead to a cracked heating coil or exchanger, as it isn’t able to give off the heat quickly enough to prevent damaging itself.

During the summer, you’ll find a similar issue with air conditioners.  Less heat will be deposited into the condenser coil.  It will cool down, leading to a formation of ice.  Since ice is an insulator, it makes it more difficult for the condenser to release heat.  It will freeze over, eventually leading to compressor damage and home with high heat and humidity.

Alternatives for Saving Money

While it’s not guaranteed that closing vents will lead to permanent damage, it will cause your system to work harder than it needs to.  Often, the rooms you try to keep climate-controlled will stay at the temperature you want, but you won’t save more than one or two dollars, and that’s only if your climate control system is improperly sized, to begin with.

So what can you do to reduce costs during the winter (or any season really)?

  • Adjust the thermostat so your system operates less
  • Leave doors to extreme temperature rooms open to help distribute heat evenly
  • Use a ceiling fan to circulate existing air
  • Use a thermally reflective film on your windows to reduce heat transfer
  • Test your system to see if upgrading to a more energy-efficient unit will help

If you still have any questions or want to upgrade to a more efficient system, give us a call at (302) 368-3848 for any of your Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania home service needs — plumbing, electrical, HVAC, propane, and more!

Call us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer any questions you might have.

For more expert tips on maintaining a safe and efficient home, visit us on our website, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

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Filed Under: Blog, Cooling, Heating, HVAC

How to Find a Gas Leak

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When using a gas fuel source, it’s important that you know how to check gas leaks.  Every leak is dangerous, no matter how small.  Every leak will also increase your fuel cost since you are steadily losing fuel over time.  It’s a good idea to have your entire fuel system inspected regularly for leaks anyway, but if you’re noticing a consistent fuel loss then it’s best to perform a quick check for leaks.

Homemade Detector

Gas leaks and air leaks from a tire are similar in principle (air isn’t dangerous but leaks out just the same).  You can check for leaks from your gas lines the same way you would from a tire.  Fill a spray bottle with dish soap and spray it over the area you think has the leak.  The most likely place will be where the gas line meets your appliance.  If you see air bubbles begin to form, you’ve found the source of your leak.  Once you know where the leak is, you can replace the faulty component and restore your appliance to service.

Carbon Monoxide

A major component of propane is carbon monoxide.  Carbon monoxide is hazardous to humans, but it is also odorless and colorless.  The only way to detect it if an odorant is not present is with a carbon monoxide detector.  CO detectors are inexpensive safety devices that should be placed near any gas-based appliances.  Since CO is heavier than air, it sinks to the bottom of the room.  CO detectors should be placed low, along the floor if possible for the earliest detection of CO leaks.  If there is a CO leak, shut down your feed lines and open exterior windows to air out the room and the building.

Gas Detector

Then again, you can always use an electronic detection device to identify leaks in a system.  These work similarly to CO detectors, but they search for abnormal pockets of gas in the air.  They aren’t able to identify exactly where on the pipeline that a leak exists, but they will alert you to the presence of a leak so you can find it or call a repair technician.

Deduction & Repair

Of course, you can always identify a leak using your senses as well.  Keep an eye out for these signs that you’re system is leaking gas:

  • Higher fuel costs each month
  • The steady loss of fuel even when not using your appliances
  • Hissing noise from pipes not in use
  • The smell of rotten eggs

The last point is especially important.  The scent of rotten eggs is added to propane to give it an easily detectable smell.  If you can smell gas, you should immediately clear the room and cut off your gas at the source to prevent more from filling in.  Call a service technician to help find and repair the leak quickly.


Give us a call at (302) 368-3848 for any of your Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania home service needs — plumbing, electrical, HVAC, propane, and more!

Call us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer any questions you might have.

For more expert tips on maintaining a safe and efficient home, visit us on our website, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

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Filed Under: Blog, Heating

How to Save Money on Heating

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We cover so many of the standard ideas for improving energy efficiency and saving money on heating costs.  From common ideas like lowering the thermostat and cleaning your air filter, to using a humidifier to raise the ambient temperature, there’s a wealth of methods for reducing heating costs.  But what other methods are there?  Today we want to show you a few other things you may not have considered when it comes to reducing energy costs.

Go Out and Visit People

The first suggestion?  Leave the house.  Spend a weekend taking the kids to visit their grandparents.  Spend evenings after work with friends, go out to eat or for a movie as part of a group.  Not only will you have fun, but every hour you aren’t at home running the heat is another hour you save on your electric or fuel bill this winter!

Hot-Water Bottles and Rice-Filled Socks

The hot-water bottle has been a trusted way of staying warm for generations.  Rice-filled fabrics are a great way to stay warm.  A few minutes in a microwave and you have a perfect jacket or blanket warmer.

Open Inside Doors

Of course, we aren’t talking about opening your home’s outer doors.  Just as closing air vents affects how your home is heated, so do open or closed doors.  By opening the doors to rooms that are warmer, you’ll allow for a greater exchange of heat between that room and the rest of the house.  It isn’t a vast increase in relative warmth, but a few small changes here and there can lead to overall changes in your monthly bill.

Fix Drafts

This is an obvious problem.  If any room or hallway is drafty, and you feel a chill blowing through, it’s not haunting.  Drafts are a huge source of energy loss in homes.  You can have stellar insulation and the best in energy-efficient heating systems and still be spending more on your utilities because of a drafty home.  Locate cracks and crevices between doors and their frames.  The same goes for windows and any other kind of exterior building openings.  Once you’ve found the culprits, seal them up to keep warm air inside and cold air out.

Move Furniture

This tactic is one that only applies to certain kinds of homes.  Specifically, homes using radiators or floor vents.  If some of the rooms in your home seem to have trouble staying warm while the rest of the house is cozy, check for the location of your vents.  If any vent (or pipe radiators) are being blocked by heavy furniture, it’s time to move it.  Heat radiates out from these sources and will be stopped by the presence of large objects.  Many pieces of furniture will act as insulators against the rest of the room, trapping heat internally.  Even if the room isn’t quite so cold, it’s best to check and move furniture if it’s blocking a vent.  Keeping flammable fabrics (or boxes) near a heat source is dangerous!

Shut Curtains

Unless the sun is currently shining through the window, your windows are a prime source for heat loss.  Glass is an excellent insulator, but a single pane of glass is not a good method of insulating against heat exchange from outside.  Drawing the curtains closed across your windows will prevent substantial heat loss when the sun isn’t on that side of the house.

Seal Chimneys

This one is easy to forget, especially since a fireplace is supposed to be a source of warmth.  Your chimney is an open path to the outside.  Closing the flue and any fireplace doors you may have can help to prevent heat loss, but they aren’t perfect.  There’s been a recent uptick in the number of chimney balloons being sold.  This is because they make up for issues not protected by a fireplace flue.  Chimney balloons float up and out of sight to insulate and block warm air from rising out of the house.  Just don’t forget to remove them before you use the fireplace.


Happy holidays!  We hope you all stay warm this winter.  If you happen to find yourself without heating, don’t hesitate to call Boulden Brothers.  We work on all kinds of heating systems, from boilers to forced air furnaces!

Give us a call at (302) 368-3848 for any of your Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania home service needs — plumbing, electrical, HVAC, propane, and more!

Call us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer any questions you might have.

For more expert tips on maintaining a safe and efficient home, visit us on our website, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

 

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Filed Under: Blog, Heating

Improve Indoor Air Quality with These 5 House Plants

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We spend the majority of our lives behind closed doors.  From the homes that shelter us from the elements to the offices and buildings where we work, a climate-controlled environment makes up all but our commutes.  Every room is temperate, with carefully filtered air that’s clean and easy to breathe.  Or at least, that’s the goal of it.  The truth is, some buildings have more trouble with air pollution inside than out.  These contaminants can come from all sorts of places too.

Old paint, dust, and mold from carpets or clothing, pet dander, and traces (sometimes in high quantities) of formaldehyde are just a few of the dangerous things floating around in the air.  These contaminants exacerbate allergies, inflame your sinuses to the point of discomfort, and can lead to ongoing respiratory problems.

Ventilation air filters are great for removing larger contaminants like pollen and dust as they pass through the air conditioner, and a UV filter will kill the majority of any germs unlucky enough to get caught in the ventilation system, but there’s one more layer of protection you can put into your home, one that’s just a bit more natural:  Houseplants.  The benefits of houseplants as an anti-pollution filter are well documented by the National Library of Medicine, based on trials done by NASA.  These trials were performed in attempts to deal with air pollution aboard the space station over the long-term residence.

Beyond the bacteria, mold spores, and dust specks that your air filter removes, there are few elements (also known as volatile organic compounds or VOC) that your in-home air and the city smog have in common:

  • Ammonia
  • Benzene
  • Formaldehyde
  • Trichloroethylene
  • Xylene and Toluene

While we could go into the negative effects of each of these, rest assured they are all decidedly harmful to your health.  If you’d like to read more about them (and other indoor air pollutants) we recommend the National Library of Medicine.

While our list of helpful houseplants is by no means exhaustive, we’re presenting the 5 plants which filter more different things out of the air than any other.  Of course, some plants are better at filtering higher quantities of individual VOCs.  And some plants, such as the miraculous aloe vera plant, have multiple other uses beyond just air filtration.  You can find a quick list of NASA’s findings here.

Things to Consider Before Buying a Plant

  1. What is your home climate like? Is the air dry and will the plant need repeated watering throughout the day to account for dry conditions?  Can the plant get plenty of sunlight?
  2. Do you have enough space for your houseplant? Some plants require very little room to grow while others spread out over time and will need constant trimming and care to keep from overrunning the room.
  3. Do you have any pets? Make sure that whatever plant you decide to keep isn’t harmful to any animals you have in the home.  Dogs and cats are especially prone to chewing on plants, so make sure you aren’t growing something poisonous.  What’s fine for you can be disastrous for them.
  4. Flowers generate a great deal of pollen. If you’re going to keep a houseplant, but have severe allergies, consider going with a leafy plant rather than something with flowers.  During the summer seasons, flowers will put pollen into the air which can aggravate allergies.  Your ventilation air filter is only partially successful at dealing with pollen counts when they’re originating from within your home.

The Best Plants for Improving Indoor Air

 

Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum ‘Mauna Loa’)

Starting our list, the Peace Lily is a beautiful plant (as well-kept lilies are) which filters all of the VOCs we’ve mentioned today.  A flowering plant, the Peace Lily will add pollen to the air during the summer, but throughout the year it does an excellent job of trapping VOCs and mold spores.  These contaminants are gathered by the leaves where they’re pushed towards the roots and processed for nutrients.

Florist’s Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium)

Image used courtesy of Forest and Kim StarrThe often-difficult-to-pronounce chrysanthemum (mum’s the word if you prefer) is a beautiful flower that will make for a wonderful arrangement in your home.  It’s also excellent for removing ammonia, formaldehyde, xylene, toluene, and benzene from the air.  Benzene is a common household chemical compound, found in detergents, glues, paints, and plastics.  Decorating your house with chrysanthemums will help to reduce the impact of benzene.

English Ivy (Hedera helix)

English Ivy is almost as good as our two previous plants.  It trades ammonia filtration for lower pollen output, a much more hypoallergenic plant than either of the two flowering plants previously mentioned.  Since it is an ivy, this plant will require more trimming and care to keep it from sprawling out and taking over a room.

Variegated Snake Plant (Sansevieria trifasciata ‘Laurentii’)

Image used courtesy of Forest and Kim StarrThe snake plant ties with English Ivy for cleaning your home’s air but it’s a very hardy plant.  Snake Plants are difficult to kill, require little watering, and prefer drier conditions.  They don’t take up nearly as much room as ivy either.  The Snake Plant is a great way to help with air in an apartment, where controlling the filtration or installing a UV filter is not an option.

Red-Edged Dracaena (Dracaena marginata)

This plant is also fairly difficult to kill, has a low amount of pollen added to the air, and removes VOCs such as benzene, xylene, toluene, and formaldehyde.  But this is not the plant to go for if you have pets, especially cats.  Pets enjoy chewing on plants (it aids with digestion for some, and is simply fun for others), but the Dracaena is toxic to some animals, most notably cats.  If you don’t have a pet, then this easy-to-care-for plant is a great choice.


Now don’t forget that proper ventilation and a good filter are just as effective (and in some cases more so) as natural house plants.  But plants are beautiful and an extra level of filtration for your home.  So if you already have plants, and need a new filter, central heating, and cooling system, or even a UV filter, just contact Boulden Brothers.

Give us a call at (302) 368-3848 for any of your Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania home service needs — plumbing, electrical, HVAC, propane, and more!

Call us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer any questions you might have.

For more expert tips on maintaining a safe and efficient home, visit us on our website, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Floral images are used courtesy of Forest and Kim Starr under a CC license.

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Filed Under: Blog, Cooling, Heating, HVAC

How Does Geothermal Heating Work?

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As a kid, I read about geothermal power in a work of science fiction years and years ago.  The idea that clean, free energy existed under the ground without massive refineries, smokestacks, or nuclear plants seemed very futuristic.  A short while later I learned that actual electrical power production using geothermal energy has been possible since the early 1900s, and continues to be used in geothermal hotspots around the world.  But when we talk about geothermal heating and cooling in your home, we aren’t talking about the production of power, just a method to regulate temperatures.  The principle is the same either way, and it’s just as amazing and clean as it was so many decades ago.

How it Works

The core of the Earth is hot, hot enough that it’s mostly molten metal and rock.  Tectonic friction and extreme pressures generate an amazing amount of heat, warming the Earth from inside.  In addition to this, the ground is an exceptional insulator, resisting changes in energy fairly well.  During the summer, the ground just below the surface is warmed and sees little variation in temperature throughout the seasons.  When you move down to about 30 feet, there is almost no change in temperature year-round.

By pushing water beneath the surface into this relatively temperate zone, heat energy can be collected and piped back up into the home where a water radiator warms the entire home.  As an added benefit, this same heating system generates enough heat to act as the hot water system for your home.  All of this is made possible using an electric pump that replaces the refrigerants, compressors, and furnace fuels used in traditional heating and cooling.

Another version of the geothermal system uses an aquifer.  This underground source of water is usually deep enough for the water to already be temperature regulated.  Water from the aquifer is pumped up into the home where it is only used for heating (the water never leaves the radiator pipes) before it is returned to the aquifer.  This kind of heating doesn’t deplete the aquifer and no water needs to be filled into the system before it can begin working.

In short, a geothermal heating and cooling system use water as a way to move heat into a home during the winter and a way to remove heat from a home during the summer.

Benefits Over Traditional Furnaces

When all is said and done, the goal is to regulate the temperature in the home.  So is a geothermal system actually better than a more traditional forced-air furnace?  While there’s never a catch-all system that’s right for everyone, a geothermal system is usually more energy-efficient than a forced-air or fueled system.  Geothermal heating systems also double as cooling systems during the summer, which makes them a total replacement for a typical HVAC system and putting them on par with reversible heat pumps as well (though again, they are more energy-efficient BTU to BTU).

A few other ways where a geothermal system is more beneficial:

  • Some systems can be built completely vertical, using a very little area
  • Water isn’t expended within the system
  • Zero carbon emissions at the home
  • Also heats your running water
  • No toxic refrigerants are used
  • No external fuel needed

In the interest of fairness, the drawbacks to this system are installation costs and work.  If your home isn’t already equipped with a geothermal system, the excavation can take out a sizeable part of your yard (which will take time to restore to normal).  The lawn will regrow but the excavation and installation costs can be extreme.  If you’re building a new house or looking for ways to save on energy in the long run, it’s a worthwhile expenditure.


Give us a call at (302) 368-3848 for any of your Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania home service needs — plumbing, electrical, HVAC, propane, and more!

Call us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer any questions you might have.

For more expert tips on maintaining a safe and efficient home, visit us on our website, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

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Filed Under: Answer Man, Blog, Cooling, Heating

Lower Heating Costs Using a Humidifier

Lower Your Heating Costs Using a Humidifier

During the summer months, high humidity is terribly annoying.  When it’s hot and humid outside, everything feels sticky, it’s difficult to use the touch screen on a phone, and it makes keeping one’s hair in order practically impossible.  The combination of heat and humidity can be miserable, causing temperatures to feel even hotter than normal.  So why then would anyone recommend adding a humidifier to your heating system for the winter months?  Because a simple humidifier is an effective method to solving many of the problems faced by you and your friends throughout the colder months of the year.

Dry Air from Heating

Most central air systems are standardized to deliver both heating and cooling.  During the summer, the cooling action of an HVAC system dehumidifies the air.  This drops the relative temperature and dries out the air to a comfortable level.  In the winter, the furnace (or in some cases, reversible heat pump) has a similar effect on the air in your home.  When the air is heated, it also dries out.  While dry air is a benefit in summer, it’s actually a problem when the temperature outside drops.

Dry air on its own comes with a host of problems.  It makes the air colder, but we’ll address that in a moment.  The drier air also increases static electricity (compounded by the fact that heavier fabrics, synthetics, and sweaters come out of the closet to fight the cold) which, while an annoyance to humans, can be dangerous to sensitive electronics and will surprise your pets when they walk up for petting.  Finally, it dries out your skin.  Staying warm in winter is usually accompanied by the curse of chapped lips, dry eyes, and flaking or cracking skin.  To some, it’s a worthwhile trade-off, but to others, it means a winter filled with creams, lotions, and eye drops.

Dry air can often lead to:

  • Colder Temperatures
  • Static Electricity
  • Dry Skin

How do you resolve this problem?  Add a little moisture back into the air after it’s been heated.  Increasing the relative humidity of your home makes it difficult for water to evaporate, decreasing how quickly your skin will dry out.  The increase in humidity will also decrease static electricity (but your favorite sweater will probably still give you enough of a jolt to surprise friends).

Humidity and Relative Temperature

The title of this post mentions lowering heating costs and we mentioned that dry air feels colder, if it’s not evident now how a humidifier can save you on heating costs, allow us to explain.  It takes energy to turn water into vapor.  When water evaporates from a surface, it takes heat energy for it to turn into a vapor.  This heat energy usually comes from the surface itself, lowering the temperature of the object.  Evaporation is one of the major ways our bodies keep us cool during the summer (and why a cool breeze is so refreshing).  As the level of humidity in the ambient air increases, less water can evaporate to fill the water-saturated air, stymieing the cooling process.

Put simply, adding water to the air (humidifying) makes it difficult for the same air to cool off occupants in the room.  The room feels warmer than it actually is because we already generate heat and it becomes harder for our bodies to cool in the humid air.  This difference can be quite drastic in fact, as you can see on this chart from HowStuffWorks.  It’s recommended that the best balance of humidity, year-round, is about 45%.  At this level of humidity, problems with mold growth are minimal and the setting you pick for your thermostat is closer to that actual value.  You’ll be able to leave your thermostat at a lower setting, saving you on energy costs and operation time.

Need Help With Heating? Call Boulden Brothers!

A home humidifier, built directly into your ventilation system, can make your home more comfortable in the winter.  These devices are often cheaper than the extra five-degrees of warmth that comes from setting your thermostat higher, saving you money and saving energy overall.  If you have any other questions or want a humidifier installed before things start to get really cold this year, just call Boulden Brothers.  We’ll be glad to come out and help you.

Give us a call at (302) 368-3848 for any of your Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania home service needs — plumbing, electrical, HVAC, propane, and more! Call us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer any questions you might have. For more expert tips on maintaining a safe and efficient home, visit us on our website, Facebook, Twitter.

Filed Under: Heating, HVAC

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