House

House Hunters

It’s that time of the year again….the kids are going back to school, vacations are becoming cherished memories, the leaves are starting to don their fall colours. Of course, it’s also the start of the major house hunting season!

If you’re looking for a new home, here are a couple of quick tips. It’s one of the biggest investments you’ll ever make so ensure that you employ a good home inspector to look after your interests. Remember that your HVAC provider would be happy to help you too, if you want some added reassurance that furnaces, a/c equipment etc are all up to scratch (or to let you know if costly changes will be needed).

Good luck in your search – we’re sure your perfect home will find you very soon!

Caledonia Integrated Services is an Energy Management, HVAC and Electrical company, serving Vancouver and BC area.
We actively encourage feedback, comments and questions. You can leave a message here, or look us up on Facebook and Twitter. Of course, you can always e- mail us too!

construction zone

The earlier the better!

When construction starts on a new building (or a reno of an old one) getting advise early on could save you a lot of trouble later on.

Don’t just rely on your architect – have  your HVAC company come to the site early on. A good HVAC contractor will be able to look over the space and let you know what will and won’t work. They should also be able to recommend the best equipment to use and advise on the prevention of future conflict with other trades. For example: where the duct will run, controls placement, electrical requirements, fresh air intake and general layout of the system. We worked on one job where they had not taken any advice. As each trade arrived on site they found the sprinklers were in their way and had to be moved. Eventually they were moved FIVE times!

With this basic info at his fingertips, the site foreman doesn’t need to be an HVAC expert. The system will be planned out from the beginning so, as each trade arrives, their part of the job is already planned out.

Caledonia Integrated Services is an Energy Management, HVAC and Electrical company, serving Vancouver and BC area.
We actively encourage feedback, comments and questions. You can leave a message here, or look us up on Facebook and Twitter. Of course, you can always e- mail us too.

Why does my air conditioning always break down on the hottest day?

Hot day

It may seem like Murphy’s Law, the temperature goes up and your a/c equipment chooses that exact moment to break down, but there’s actually a logical reason for this to happen.

The hotter it gets, the harder your equipment needs to work. For example, if it’s 28°C outside and with your a/c running it’s 22°C inside, that’s a 6°C difference. Now consider when that changes to 32°C outside. Your equipment now has to make up a 10°C difference. So, as the a/c works harder any little problems will start to show….dirty filters, plugged ‘p’ traps, dirty coils, bad air flow etc will all start to affect performance.

So, if you want to keep your cool over the summer…keep all doors and windows closed when equipment is running (otherwise you’re just trying to cool your entire town!!) and make sure your machinery is well maintained and clean.

Caledonia Integrated Services is an Energy Management, HVAC and Electrical company, serving Vancouver and BC area.
We actively encourage feedback, comments and questions. You can leave a message here, or look us up on Facebook and Twitter. Of course, you can always e- mail us too!

Exhaust fan

Wake up call

Last Friday we got a call at 11pm from a restaurant. They were frantically trying to find someone to come and look at the exhaust fan which had stopped working. 5.30 on Saturday morning,  off we went….and found the exhaust fan working and the make up air pushing air into the kitchen! So, why the panic call the night before, and what had changed between then and now?

Well, closer inspection to the exhaust fan revealed that the pulleys and belt were so warm that the belt was slipping a little. Not too bad at that time in the morning, but you can imagine the heat build up after it had been running all day! When we checked the make up air it was also found to be in desperate need of attention.

Discussing all this with the manager his face fell, and he told me he has a maintenance company who come to the premises twice a year. It seems the company had been missing a lot of the equipment, but why? Well, what usually happens when you employ a new company to do your maintenance work is that a journeyman will come out and do all the work needed. He usually comes for the first few visits to sort out any major problems. Then the company will just start sending an apprentice to change the filters etc. Only sometimes are the apprentices shown what to do!

Restaurants are especially vulnerable to this, the apprentice can’t turn off the exhaust fan when the kitchen is cooking, and the make up air in this case was hidden in the ceiling. So, unless the apprentice knows to look for it or has been told its location, the equipment remains untouched. Years go by…..and then the equipment waits until a busy weekend in the middle of summer, and stops working!

It really is worth investing in an hour of someone’s time to have them check that all your equipment IS being maintained, otherwise it could cost you thousands of dollars to replace all your uncared for machines.

Caledonia Integrated Services is an Energy Management, HVAC and Electrical company, serving Vancouver and BC area.
We actively encourage feedback, comments and questions. You can leave a message here, or look us up on Facebook and Twitter. Of course, you can always e- mail us too!

Fridge

Why is my Fridge dripping?

We recently posted a blog about fridges not cooling in the summer, which proved very popular, so we thought we’d also cover the second most common fridge complaint….a water leak.

We get lots of calls in the summer about water sitting in the fridge and sometimes on the floor (which is yet another good reason not to have hardwood floors in the kitchen!). Where is all that water coming from? Well, in the freezer there is a coil which is responsible for keeping everything cold. When the humidity is high in the summer, and you open the fridge door, all the moisture ends up on the coil. Of course it freezes once it’s there so over time ice builds up. Your fridge is equipped to deal with this though, using a heater. When the ice melts it drains down the back of the fridge and is evaporated by the heat of the compressor.

There are two reasons this water can become a problem. One is that the drain gets plugged; by dust, dirt or bits of food. The other reason could be that the heater is burnt out, which means the unit cannot defrost itself. More and more ice will build up and some will melt on the off cycle. This is an easy problem to avoid, just keep your fridge clean and well maintained…..and we hope this helps you through a hot summer!

Caledonia Integrated Services is an Energy Management, HVAC and Electrical company, serving Vancouver and BC area.
We actively encourage feedback, comments and questions. You can leave a message here, or look us up on Facebook and Twitter. Of course, you can always e- mail us too!