D'Spain Sales and Service Blog : Archive for March, 2015

The Benefits of Air Conditioning Maintenance

Wednesday, March 25th, 2015

The warm weather has already started in Texas, and of course it will only grow hotter as we draw nearer to the summer. Now is the perfect time to assess the situation with your home’s air conditioning system. Is it ready for another rough summer season when it will need to work long hours through the day keeping your household cooled down? Are you worried that it might suffer from repair problems, begin draining excess energy, or even fail entirely? There is only one way to know for certain that your AC has the best preparation possible, and that’s to arrange for regular maintenance.

D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. offers Service Club Membership to help you take care of your AC with annual maintenance each spring. (The club also provides heating maintenance in the fall.) Give us a call today to get started with that all-important air conditioning maintenance in Bandera, TX that will help see you have a worry-free summer season.

Here are some of the ways you’ll benefit from AC maintenance:

  • Few repairs—probably none! – During maintenance, a technician will search for spots where the AC is wearing down and in danger of developing malfunctions. The technician will take care of the cleaning and adjustments that will avoid triggering a repair need. You can expect to encounter the minimum amount of repairs for your AC thanks to regular maintenance.
  • Money-saving performance – Each year an air conditioner goes without maintenance will cause it to lose performance and cost more to run. If you keep up with yearly maintenance, you can expect the system to retain 95% of its energy efficiency through most of its life.
  • Peace of mind – You don’t want to worry that every time you turn on your air conditioner during a hot summer day that it will stutter and then fail to turn on. But there is a high chance that this will eventually happen to you if you neglect regular inspections and tune-ups for your AC. A yearly maintenance check will give you the reassurance that your air conditioning system will make it through to the fall.

It’s easy to arrange for air conditioning maintenance in Bandera, TX. Call D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. and ask about signing up for our Service Club. In addition to two precision tune-ups each year, you’ll receive other bonuses, such as discounts and 24-hour appointment guarantees. Get a head start on the summer today and arrange for AC maintenance.

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Why You Need Water Purification for Your Well Water

Friday, March 20th, 2015

In Boerne, not every home has access to a municipal water supply, and must instead rely on water drawn from a well. If you are a homeowner who receives water from a well, you need to make sure that you have a water purification system in place. There is no “one size fits all” well water purifier, however. If there are quality problems with your groundwater, you will need to have water treatment professionals analyze it and determine the purifier that will effectively cleanse the water of its unhealthy contaminants.

Call on D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. if you need well water purification in Boerne, TX. We specialize in purifying well water in the area and offer many services to see that your family receives the cleanest, purest water possible.

The issues with well water

Water that comes from the municipal system must first go through an extensive water treatment plant that removes such contaminants as heavy metals, chemicals, and excess minerals. This water can still pick up seepage through groundwater on the way to homes, but it starts out on the trip purified. (In fact, it’s much more purified than bottled water.)

However, with well water, there is no purification system in place. If your home extracts its freshwater direct from groundwater or an underground aquifer, it can contain a large amount of pollutants that enter it through the soil. One of the common problems that well water encounters is from pesticides that seep into the ground. The groundwater often contains a high mineral content that leads to hard water problems in home plumbing. Arsenic and heavy metals are also frequent contaminants found in well water.

It’s important that you have water testing done on the well water for your property. Professional testing will determine what issues are in your water supply, and the water treatment specialists can then advise on a purification system, such as a water softener or UV purifier.

D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. offers quality water testing and installation of water purification in Boerne, TX. If you use well water but have not installed any water treatment system to purify it, contact us today. We will see that you have the quality of water necessary to protect the health of your family and keep your plumbing in top shape.

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Some End of Season Heating Services

Friday, March 13th, 2015

As we move through March, we are approaching the end of the heating season: the cooler period of the year when we use our home’s heaters the most. Soon, our furnaces will turn off or our heat pumps will switch over to cooling mode, and we will once more be concerned with staying cool during the heavy Texas heat.

In these waning days of cooler weather, there are some services you can take care of for your heating system that will help make sure you will encounter as few troubles as possible before you switch entirely to air conditioning, and also to ensure the heater will work when heating season returns at the end of the year.

Call on D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. for any professional assistance you may need for heating in Helotes, TX and the surrounding areas.

Make sure the heater receives regular maintenance

The mild winters in Texas have an unfortunate side effect of making it easy for homeowners to forget to arrange for regular heating maintenance during the fall. If you didn’t schedule a maintenance visit last fall, you shouldn’t decide to just skip it for a year: it’s never too late to call up our technicians and arrange for your routine maintenance visit. Each year a heater misses maintenance will result in it losing efficiency and costing more to run.

Change the air filter (or clean it)

You should change the air filter for your forced-air heater an average of once a month when it runs on a regular basis. (If you use a permanent filter, you should clean it.) Since your air conditioning system will likely use the same filter, make sure you have it changed/cleaned before the end of the heating season to get rid of any debris that might still be caught in it; that way you enter the cooling season without obstructions blocking the AC’s airflow.

Have any necessary repairs done

This is crucial: if you heater has started to indicate that it is having performance troubles, don’t ignore them since the summer weather is approaching. You should never let a potential repair issue go without attention, since it could mean a heater that fails to come on many months later when you actually need it. The sooner you have a repair done, the less likely it will increase and turn into a bigger repair down the road—or even a full breakdown.

To schedule maintenance or repairs for your heater at the end of the season, contact the Helotes, TX heating professionals at D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. We offer emergency service for your convenience.

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What Is an AFCI Outlet?

Wednesday, March 11th, 2015

Electrical outlets in homes and businesses have advanced a long way from the old style of two-prong outlets without grounding. Some homes still have these outdated types of outlet, and if your home is one of them, you should contact a professional electrician to put in updated outlets, such as GFCI and AFCI outlets. Both these outlets help provide safety in a home, but from two different types of electrical dangers. A GFCI outlet prevents sending high voltage electrical shocks into a person. We’ll explain below what the AFCI outlet does.

If you need to have upgrades for the outlets in your home, call the excellent electrical team at D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. We offer comprehensive residential electrical services in Fair Oaks Ranch, TX, from installing new outlets and circuit breaker panels to full safety inspections.

AFCI outlets: arc fault protection

When an appliance is plugged into an outlet, it can cause the heat to rise inside the outlet, a phenomenon known as arcing, when electricity is conducted through the air and converted into heat. An AFCI (“arc fault circuit interrupter”) outlet is designed to detect when arcing occurs and then immediately cut off the circuit inside the outlet and stop the flow of electricity and the arcing. Arc fault protection is not limited to outlets; it is often part of the electrical panel, so your home may already have arc fault protection even if it does not have specific AFCI outlets for it.

Currently, the National Electric Code (NEC) requires AFCI protection for wiring that serves bedrooms and other sleeping areas in a house, since these are locations where a fire could start in the outlet and catch someone by surprise. However, the NEC is not a federal law, only a set of guidelines, and all local jurisdictions select their own version of the code to enforce. A professional electrician will know what the local code requirements are for your area.

If you have doubts about the electrical safety of your home, or if you’re unsure if you have arc protection or not, please call D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. We can provide an electrical inspection to determine what safety measures you may need. Afterwards, we can install GFCI and AFCI outlets, or place arc fault protection into your electrical panel. We will help see that your home has the best level of electrical safety to protect your family. Rely on us for any job you need that’s electrical in Fair Oaks Ranch, TX.

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Some Benefits of Improving Your Outdoor Lighting

Wednesday, March 4th, 2015

Does the outside of your home seem drab, gloomy, dim? Perhaps you should call for professional electricians to improve the outdoor lighting around your home. There are a number of excellent reasons to call the electricians at D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. to work on your outdoor lighting in Bandera, TX. Here are a few of them:

Increased use of recreational areas

In a place with warm weather like Texas, you should be able to enjoy outdoor patios, verandas, balconies, and pools during most of the year. But unless you have excellent outdoor lighting, you will get significantly less enjoyment out of these areas, especially during periods of with short days. The fun shouldn’t stop when the sun goes down.

Safety

The walkways and stairs around the outside of your property can present potential hazards for residents and guests, who can suffer from injuries. If you have children and elderly people who require assistance living in your home, it is ever more important to see that your house’s exterior has quality lighting for its walkways.

Security

Studies have shown that criminals are far less likely to target a well-lit home than one with dim lighting. A well-designed lighting scheme from professionals that avoids harsh areas of darkness between lighted areas will also remove places where unwanted intruders can hide, helping to keep your home and family protected.

Increase Property Value

If you think that you may sell your home at some point in the future (possibly the far off future), improved outdoor lighting will do a tremendous amount to increase the home’s “curb appeal” and raise its market value. Better outdoor lighting is a less expensive way of giving your home a fresh outdoor appeal than a large scale remodeling.

Your home will simply look better

Finally, with an excellent outdoor lighting scheme, you will have a home that you will enjoy looking at and feel proud of. It’s a more subjective benefit, but it may be the most important one of all.

If you would like better outdoor lighting in Bandera, TX, you only have to let us know. D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. has the electrical services that you need for the best home lighting possible, and we can help you save energy as well with LED light installation. Call today to set up an appointment.

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