Hi folks, I’m Jon Mullen the Energy Evangelist. It’s a new month and we’re looking at savings on your HVAC resources (that’s your Heating, Ventilation and Air Con). So where do we start? It has to be maintenance and keeping your gear clean. 

I have been refurbishing houses for a number of years and I have found many elements in those houses which have never been maintained. If you don’t maintain the system it will eventually fail. We all need (me included) to remember that every system needs maintenance. People buy new systems, everything from a car to a coffee machine, and after a period of time you need to clear out the dust, dirt and gunk. Imagine if you never cleaned out the coffee machine, and you used it every day, or you only cleaned a bit of it. It would end up in a big mess very quickly. This applies to your HVAC system. If you look after this system then it will provide you with more heat for less running and maintenance costs. So every year book in an engineer and deep clean or tune up your systems. 

If you use air-conditioning and heating more, then more air and dust are pulled through your system. This means that you will need to replace your filters on a regular basis in addition to engineering maintenance, or clean them if they are reusable? If your temperatures are extreme then you may need to do this more frequently. Filters are cheap and dirty filters increase your costs, overload your systems and the results are lower indoor air quality and higher running costs.

On top of these maintenance elements the results look after your employees, that means they will be able to get more work completed.

This is a very high level BBC article about how Covid-19 is spread through HVAC systems (go to 27:30 minutes into the news video for the article) https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000m2l1/bbc-news-at-ten-25082020

Here is another article about filtering solutions for HVAC (please remember this is a very fast moving topic of conversation, so this may be superceded) - https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-ventilation-and-air-filtration-to-prevent-the-spread-of-coronavirus-indoors-143732

I’m Jon Mullen the Energy Evangelist. Come and find out how to save more energy and cash at EnergyEvangelist.co.uk