HVAC Annual Inspection

[BullCity75]

Originally Posted by pdocstr

The fact that Duke Energy incentivizes maintenance should say a lot. If you'd like to see specific research, you're probably only a search engine and investment of time away. You can do a lot of the maintenance items yourself. It's fairly common knowledge that poorly maintained condenser/evaporator coils reduce energy performance, but there are some other things to know.

Health Check -Duke Energy

As I said though, whether or not meticulous maintenance pays for itself every time in every case is hard to measure. You could look at two sets of condenser coils on two separate properties on the exact same beginning and end day and they will almost never be equally dirty. It's close to impossible to set up a perfectly scientific experiment to illustrate energy usage and longevity of system life over a 15-25 year period, so depending on what sort of scientific evidence you're searching for in the research, you may come up disappointed. A little common knowledge about mechanical systems and moving parts is probably the best asset.

Your heat pump or central air conditioner is eligible for a Health Check incentive once during the life of the equipment.

I dunno, I think the Duke program tends to support my argument. It's a one-time incentive, not twice a year. Also, I think the goal of this program, like all inspections is to identify problems that might encourage people to replace their unit sooner, even though it is working well enough right now.

Its not so much whether regular maintenance pays off, but rather the money spent on it does. Perversely, units that are regularly inspected are probably replaced sooner, because when made aware of small problems (slow refrigerant leak, cracked heat exchanger, etc), people proactively replace them instead of waiting for them to actually fail.

Aside from hosing off the coil every once in a while, I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[pdocstr]

Originally Posted by BullCity75

I dunno, I think the Duke program tends to support my argument. It's a one-time incentive, not twice a year. Also, I think the goal of this program, like all inspections is to identify problems that might encourage people to replace their unit sooner, even though it is working well enough right now.

Its not so much whether regular maintenance pays off, but rather the money spent on it does. Perversely, units that are regularly inspected are probably replaced sooner, because when made aware of small problems (slow refrigerant leak, cracked heat exchanger, etc), people proactively replace them instead of waiting for them to actually fail.

Aside from hosing off the coil every once in a while, I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I think you're correct that the primary goal of the Duke program is more to create awareness of the energy savings of HVAC maintenance rather than to propose it needs to be done on a particular schedule -- as I said before, the exact timing threshold of "minimum maintenance" that still provides maximum cost benefit would vary from home to home, and would depend on the weather fluctuations of any particular season, what temps the owner runs the unit at, etc.

For that reason, Duke Energy and the HVAC companies themselves cannot tell you for sure that maintenance twice a year is absolutely necessary (and I was not suggesting that it was), but the problem is that it is even more impossible for you or another homeowner that is not trained in HVAC to know how much the lack of maintenance is affecting their particular system if they aren't at least having it inspected. So the twice a year guideline is just an err on the side of caution thing like an annual termite inspection.

Waiting for it to just stop working before doing anything about it usually means when it does break, it's going to break on the hottest or coldest times of the day. This means that in addition to any fix (which may leave you in the cold or hot for a few days as parts are ordered) is also going to have a few emergency service charges slapped on top of it and/or leave you scrambling to find better quotes from other companies. Have you ever tried to call one of these companies on a freezing night when the heat goes out? Good luck with getting a return call -- tens of thousands of others are trying to get them to come out to fix theirs too.

It's not much different than maintaining your own health. You can forego brushing and flossing your teeth using the same philosophy, and just worry about fixing when something falls out, but you also run the risk of collateral damage like oral cancer when dealing with teeth, and you run the risk of collateral damage like humidity problems from an HVAC system. So for that reason there is a certain amount of value to just saying on top of anything that might cost a lot of money to fix in terms of maintenance and awareness.