D'Spain Sales and Service Blog

How an Energy Recovery Ventilator Helps Your AC

May 4th, 2015

When it comes to upgrades for your air conditioning system, there are a few that may immediately spring to mind: humidifiers, dehumidifiers, air filters, etc. These are all excellent products, but if you are looking to improve your AC’s energy efficiency and your home’s ventilation, there is another product you’ll want to consider: an energy recovery ventilator, also known as an ERV. ERVs are great for both your air conditioner and your heating system, and there’s a few reasons why, as we’ll explain below.

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Why Should I Get a Water Filtration System?

April 27th, 2015

Clean water is an absolute necessity, and with a water filtration system, you can help ensure that your home has the cleanest water it possibly can. Here in Boerne, TX, that’s no small consideration, especially if you think about our water needs during the heat of summer. Safe and effective water filtration systems can be quickly installed by a trained professional, but even so, it’s a something that any prudent home owner should think about before committing to. “Why should I get a water filtration system?” you ask. Here’s a brief breakdown of the answers.

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What Are My Choices for AC Installation in Kerrville, TX?

April 20th, 2015

Summer is on its way, and if you don’t have a reliable AC in your home or business, now is the perfect time to review your choices for installation. Whether you need to replace an outdated system or are installing a system for the first time, the air conditioning experts at D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc., are here to help you every step of the way. The first step in any installation process is working with a specialist – all you have to do is give us a call, and we are here to help you with your AC installation in Kerrville, TX.

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Use the Earth to Cool My House? Huh?

April 14th, 2015

Have you ever noticed how your home’s basement maintains a steady temperature year-round, whether it’s 40 degrees or 100 degrees outside? The reason this happens is that the ground beneath the frost line stays within the same temperature range of 55-61 degrees all year, so your cellar does, too. Geothermal systems use this idea to provide your home with cooling and heating in the most efficient and sustainable way possible. Sound crazy?

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How to Get Zone Cooling in Your Home

April 13th, 2015

It can be challenging to meet your entire home’s cooling needs with a single thermostat, particularly if you have a multi-story home or one with specialized architecture, such as floor-to-ceiling windows. One of the best ways to achieve the kind of cooling you want space-by-space is to consider the installation of zone cooling, also known as zone control. There are two ways to install zone cooling in your Boerne, TX home: install a ductless system or install a zone control system into your ductwork. 

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The Benefits of Attic Fans

April 6th, 2015

It gets hot in our area, and one part of your home that you can always count on being warm during the summer months is your attic space. It isn’t unusual for attic spaces to be poorly insulated and/or poorly ventilated, but not many homeowners realize just how much this excess heat can affect your home’s structure and indoor temperature. But there’s a simple way to add great ventilation to your attic space without breaking your wallet: hire a trained electrician from D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc., to install an attic fan in your Boerne, TX, home.

What Does an Attic Fan Do?

Attic fans can be installed into your roof or a gable, and are equipped with a thermostat that cues the fan to turn on when the heat inside your attic reaches a certain temperature. The fan expels the excess heat, creating circulation in the attic that allows fresh air to be drawn in from soffits and other ventilation points.

Why Is Ventilation Important?

It only takes an outside temperature in the 80s to push the temperature of your attic as high as 150 degrees. An attic fan can cool your attic as much as 50 degrees while also improving the ventilation.

What Are the Benefits of Attic Fans?

  • Helps reduce the workload on your AC – heat doesn’t stand still, it moves, and one of the natural laws of heat is that it will always seek cool air. This means that the hot air that accumulates in your attic space will seek the cooler air in your home’s living spaces. Your AC will have to combat this excess heat by working harder. However, with an attic fan helping to push the heat along, you can reduce the workload on your AC and save some energy.
  • Extends the life of your roof – excess heat in your attic will heat the roofing materials from underneath, causing them to dry and become brittle. Removing the excess heat with an attic fan helps to significantly reduce and/or eliminate this problem.

Attic fans are typically connected directly to your home’s electrical system, which is one of the reasons why it’s important to hire an expert for installation.

Does your home need an attic fan, or does an older one need replacement? Call us today!

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Why You Need to Change Your AC’s Air Filter

April 2nd, 2015

Any air conditioner in a place that can grow as hot as Helotes, TX will do an enormous amount of work during the year. To make sure that an AC works at peak energy efficiency and lasts for as many years as possible, it must have the stress and strain from all the work that it does lessened through regular maintenance.

Most maintenance jobs require an HVAC technician. Arrange to have a full inspection and tune-up for your air conditioning system from a professional each spring. However, there are a few maintenance steps you should take over the summer while the AC runs on a regular basis. One of the most important is to routinely change the air filter, or clean it if the AC uses a permanent filter.

Call D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. to arrange for spring maintenance for your air conditioning in Helotes, TX. Our technicians will help show you how to take care of changing/cleaning the air filter during the rest of the season.

Why this job is so important

The air filter on your air conditioner isn’t there to protect your indoor air from contaminants, although it does help with this a little. Its real purpose is to keep particles in the air from the return vents from entering the AC and damaging its components. During regular operation, debris such as dust, lint from furniture and carpets, pet hair, and pollen will become trapped in the filter. After a month of steady work, an air conditioner will have a congested filter. Unless the filter is changed or cleaned to get rid of the debris clogging it, it will cause the airflow into the system to drop dramatically.

There are a number of negative consequences to this:

  • Low airflow will force the AC’s mechanical components to work harder, raising operating costs.
  • Less warm air across the evaporator coils may cause them to start to freeze.
  • The airflow from the vents into the rooms will decrease, leading to a drop in comfort.
  • Contaminants may break through the clogged filter and damage the AC.

Changing the filter or cleaning it is a simple task, and you should do it each month during warm weather. Ask your D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. technician to show you how to do this during the spring maintenance visit. You can rely on us for all your needs for quality air conditioning repair in Helotes, TX.

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The Benefits of Air Conditioning Maintenance

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

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

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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