Preserving the Great Indoors Blog
We are thrilled to offer the Preserving the Great Indoors (PGI) Blog, with content designed to help you preserve your great indoors. We hope to help answer questions about your home's HVAC systems, as well as provide general tips, tricks, and advice for making your home safe and comfortable all year. We love to hear from our customers and help them find the solutions that are best for them. Please don't hesitate to add your questions, comments, or advise to any of our posts.
Lower concentration of alcohol may disinfect better than higher concentrations.
This might seem counter intuitive, but 70% alcohol is a actually a better disinfectant than 99% alcohol! Isopropyl alcohol (2-propanol), also known as isopropanol or IPA, is the most common and widely used disinfectant within pharmaceutics, hospitals, cleanrooms, and electronics or medical device manufacturing. Different solutions, purity grades, concentrations, and alcohol types yield beneficial cleaning…
Traditional vs. Tankless
My parents are getting ready to do a major remodel on their old farmhouse near Audubon, IA, including getting a new water heater. So my mother called me to find out what kind they should get, a traditional one or a tankless one. Being the good daughter I am, I told her I’d do some research…
14 Ways to Save Money Doing Laundry
It’s starting to warm up here in Des Moines, IA and yesterday while driving home from work I saw several of my neighbors with laundry out on their clothes lines. While drying your clothes on a line may add to your chore list a bit it saves on the energy cost of drying your clothes…
6 Tips to Maintain Your Water Heater
I’m the second oldest of six children. Growing up my favorite time of day was the early morning hours of quiet before everyone else was awake. I’d get myself some Trix or Captain Crunch, read the comics from the newspaper, and then I’d take a nice long hot shower. My other siblings did not appreciate…
Should My Home Have a Humidifier?
We all remember those moments during the summer, when you walk out the door to find it’s so hot, sticky, and humid that you want to turn around, and go back inside to take another shower. We don’t usually have that problem in the winter. In colder months humidity often drops drastically low causing issues…
Bryant Furnaces Good, Better, & Best
Over the past couple of months we’ve been learning about furnaces, everything from preventative maintenance, troubleshooting, energy efficiency, the different types of furnaces, what to look for, and how HVAC SAVE Testing can qualify you for rebates. To wrap up the series we are comparing features and pricing of four Good, Better, and Best Bryant…
How to Change Your Washer Hoses
I came across a Pinterest post awhile back for new home owners, listing the things you should do when you move into a previously owned house. One of the things listed was to change out old rubber washer hoses with new stainless steel braided hoses. After doing some research, I’ve discovered several reasons for this. …
Understanding HVAC SAVE Testing
If you’ve been looking into getting a new heating and/or cooling system within the past couple of years it’s likely that you’ve heard of HVAC SAVE Testing. Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) System Adjustment & Verified Efficiency (SAVE) is testing performed by a certified technician to verify that your furnace or air conditioner is…
Three Types of Furnaces
Today we are shinning the spotlight on the three different types of furnaces: single stage, two stage, and variable speed. Deciding which furnace will work best for your home is based on multiple factors including: climate, size and levels of your home, existing duct work, insulation, and of course budget. Understanding how the different types…
Understanding Furnace Efficiency
Every industry has its own language and dialect. After starting work at Resource Services it didn’t take long before I started hearing things like “plenum”, “SEER”, and “manometer”. Today we are going to investigate another one, “AFUE”. It turns out that AFUE is actually pretty important, especially if you are in the market for a…