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…

Program Your Thermostat to Save Energy

Programmable thermostats are fantastic tools to help you save on energy costs. In fact according to https://www.energystar.gov/ programming these settings properly can save you as much as $180* per year. However, just like any other tool, unless it’s used properly it won’t get the job done as efficiently as it was designed to do. A…

Purchasing a Furnace with Confidence

Furnaces are some of the most expensive appliances that you will ever purchase for your home. Unfortunately, they are also appliances that people don’t generally know a whole lot about. So how do you know you are purchasing the right one for your home? In this post we’ll go over the main things you need…

5 Ways to Camouflage Your Thermostat

Thermostats, while useful tools to help control the efficiency of your home heating and cooling system, can also become unsightly when they break up the flow or decoration of your home. I spoke with our service manager, Kevin, about what we need to know when approaching this conundrum. He said, “Thermostats won’t work correctly without…

What Does a Furnace Tune-Up Involve?

It’s that time of year again, when the temperature drops and the kids all look out the window every morning hoping for enough snow for school to be canceled. We rely on our furnaces to keep our homes warm and comfortable. Keeping up on your preventative maintenance with a yearly tune-up is important to ensure…

Preserving the Great Indoors

I started working for Resource Services this past June with no prior experience in the heating and cooling industry. While researching for my job interview, I found out many things that intrigued me about the company and industry. However, one thing that caught my attention was Resource Services’ tagline, ‘Preserving the Great Indoors’. My mind…