My husband and I do the snowbird thing and it is looking more and more likely that we will just end up down south.

The north is just horrible.

It is always cold and terrible all year long. The northern laws in regards to COVID, plastic bags and taxes are worse too than down south. My husband and I have thought about making the permanent move. We don’t even like our northern house as well. It is bigger and requires so much more upkeep. Due to severe cold and snow, there is quite a bit of damage. I am constantly removing branches, raking leaves and tending to the gardens. Inside the house has seams that pop due to the severe cold. I have needed to deal with plumbing pipes bursting due to not enough heating. It isn’t like we don’t have a good heating system. Our household has three heaters and it still isn’t enough. Our southern home is a small house that I can clean in under an hour. We only need to have a ductless heat pump for heating and cooling. That machine runs reliably without a hitch. There is no severe cold or pipes bursting. The worst is in the heat of summer I have to fight mold and cockroaches in the house. I just need to be diligent with AC settings and cleaning. My husband and I are looking to retire, sell the northern home and just be southern people now. It is a way less stressful life and not as much work.

air duct cleaning

When my husband is gone I take the opportunity to really clean my house.

The first thing I am going to do is hire out ductwork cleaning.

I have done a lot of projects in the house that create dust. Anytime my heating or cooling system turns on, my surfaces are dusty. I also don’t like the idea of having polluted indoor air quality. So first things first the HVAC contractor is going to clean my ductwork. I want every nook and cranny squeaky clean. I also want a HEPA filter in my HVAC system and the inner workings washed up. Once my HVAC is back in tip top shape, I am going to scrub the rest of the house. I want to wash the ceilings, around the air vents, mop the floors and wash all the linens. My goal is to have my house smell and look fresh. I will even let the HVAC have a break for a few days too. I Want to open my windows to allow a fresh breeze in my house. I hate that the same stale air keeps circling in my house. It gets stuffy and smelly. I always notice how gross my house is once I introduce clean air. It is like my house smells like a giant fart and I don’t notice until I open some windows and my door. My husband flips out when there is no AC. So I need to wait for him not to be around in order to do that. I could take or leave AC.

Programmable thermostat

Buying a pool is a significant purchase that doesn’t add that much value to the house.

If you really think about it, a pool isn’t a smart financial decision.

I love swimming though and I know I would enjoy a pool immediately. So I pushed and pushed before my husband relented into getting the family a pool. Every little feature costs extra so we skimped where we could. Our pavers aren’t top of the line and there aren’t very many. The pool is a bit on the smaller side and there aren’t any fancy places to sit. It is functional and not all that beautiful. That is just fine by me. I want something to swim in and enjoy. One thing I refused to budge on was a pool heating system though. I knew that the nights would get quite cold and I would still want to swim. I live down south and it is basically pool season all year long. With a heater, you never have to go a day without swimming. There are many features on a pool that aren’t necessary, a heater is an extreme need though. My husband and I talked to our local HVAC dealer and found that our bioer could serve as a pool heater. We simply needed to hook piping to the boiler in order to connect to our swimming pool. It was a little cheaper going through the HVAC company rather than buying a specific pool heater from the pool company. Either way I have a heated pool and I am happy.

 

a/c workman

It is a nice change up

I lived up north my entire life. I only relied on heating systems, there was no need for AC. The summer season is short and not particularly hot. There would be one or two days of heat that would follow with cold nights. There was no reason to have AC, a pool or any other summer related things. My family had three heating systems in the house. We had a kitchen heater, gas fireplace in the living room and an old Moore heater upstairs. Even with all three heating systems running, the house wasn’t ever toasty. The temperatures would get to -20 degrees. It was hard to heat a big house that was so cold. Adding insulation, caulk and putting towels around the doors only helped so much. When I moved down south I was excited to no longer experience snow and extreme cold. I still wanted a heating system in my house. I talked to my HVAC contractor and he was adamant that I needed air conditioning. I felt silly buying a cooling system when I have never needed one before. The guy sold me on a ductless heat pump and I am so thankful. Thank goodness I didn’t go without AC for even a month. The south is the reverse of where I used to live. I now use AC all the time. Very rarely do I need to turn on my heating system. It is a nice change up. I now get to be too hot for once and actually get a tan. My husband and I are looking into buying a pool.

 

company

I bought my house about three months too early.

I had three months left on my rental home before I had to move out.

I decided that I was going to fix up my new house while I had the time. It was nice fixing up the house with nothing in it. I could scrape popcorn ceilings, sand doors and paint without anything in my way. I would clean up to the best of my ability, but it didn’t matter at the time. I also redid all the flooring before moving in since I felt that would be easiest. What I didn’t plan on was the smart thermostat. I installed a smart thermostat first thing in the house. The thermostat worked great and looked even better. While I was there I wanted high AC so I wouldn’t sweat to death painting and sanding. I then would turn it off when I left. It took me months to realize that the smart thermostat learned a heating and cooling program off my comings and goings. Unfortunately I wasn’t that reliable time wise. So the thermostat without fail was pumping AC throughout the house from 12-5 regardless if I was there or not. In the vinings it would blast heating if it got too cold. I noticed the odd settings after I did some investigating after a high energy bill. I then needed to teach the thermostat a new program that was better for someone who didn’t live there yet. I didn’t want to have AC unless I was physically in the house.

 

 

Heating corp

I removed a wood stove when I moved into my house.

It was the first thing I demanded be changed.

The previous homeowner was definitely a history buff and liked the old timey vibe of a wood stove. He had it sitting on a brick pad centrally located in the living room. The heater actually vented up through the wood ceiling and out of the house. There was an addition put on the roof to make it more functional. How ridiculous is that? I found out later the wood stove was actually too small for the size of the home. It was really more of a decorative piece. I wasn’t going to cut wood to have heating that didn’t really work. I hated that I couldn’t put a TV anywhere. I also didn’t like the big brick pad that stuck out. It was so much work removing the heater, but I am glad I did it. I had to enlist help on moving the cast iron stove and I sold the heater for a guy’s hunting shack. I then smashed the brick pad, patched the veiling and had roofers remove the protrusion. Lastly I had to redo all the living room carpet since it was cut around the woodstove. It was so much time, effort and money just to remove a heater that didn’t really work. Now I just have a ductless heat pump for heating and it works perfectly fine. It is hidden in the closet and I have a huge living room now. It was a good idea by me to remove it.

 

Click for more on air conditioning

My kitchen is being remodeled as we speak.

• I have spared no expense to make it the kitchen of my dreams.

What is nice is that my kitchen is really small, so buying expensive products isn’t an issue. I was able to get the best quartz countertop because there simply isn’t that much. I have custom made all the wood cabinets being installed. I even splurged for better hardware, lighting and a sink. I am going to love my new kitchen. I even decided to add heated flooring. That was a last minute item and very expensive. I thought about it and decided it was better to overplan than under. My kitchen always gets super cold in the winter. I used to rely on a ventless heater against the wall. I removed that to get more lower cabinet space. I wanted to have some other form of heating. A ductless heater would have been wall mounted and taken upper cabinet square footage. With heated flooring everything is safely hidden under the floors and takes up no space. Since it is electric heated mats there are no cold spots, heat rising or noises when the system operates. It is said to be energy smart due to objects feeling heated when they come into contact with the floors. That means I should be able to lower the thermostat a bit and save money. Heated flooring should pay back itself. I also like that it just seems so classy to have heated floors. I will be able to do dinner prep in the winter without socks on.

 

AC filter

I don’t think anyone can’t hate popcorn ceilings like myself.

I have scrapped a ton in my time.

I have my own way of doing it now. I used to wet the popcorn, let it sit for a minute and then scrape it. That works pretty decent and gets the ceiling where it just has a light texture. Then you need a skim coat of mud and to sand the whole ceiling. I did this in my entire house to have smooth ceilings. Why was popcorn ever a fad? It makes it so you can’t clean the ceiling or paint without debris falling down. Spider webs catch on it and it doesn’t look good. I removed my air vents the other day and realized that the popcorn got sprayed within the ductwork a bit. There are pieces of popcorn in my metal air ducts. Is that bad for my HVAC system? Will it not operate as well anymore? I have debated on calling a HVAC company for ductwork cleaning. It would be nice to remove all the old webs, debris and dirt inside. I also want to know if they can get rid of the popcorn in the pipe. I of course ran the AC the whole time I was scraping the ceilings too. I know for a fact that the dusty air was sucked into my ductwork. That can’t be good for my indoor air quality. There are numerous reasons for me to call for a ductwork cleaning appointment. I am just being really lazy.

Read more about heating

I like buying houses, fixing them up and selling them for a profit.

This is also known as a flip house. I come from a very handy family. It is quite easy for me to get everything back in tip top shape and sell within a year. I like that I have another home to house all my extensive tools and an ongoing project. My wife frequently comes to the flip house and helps me out. We have done some massive projects together. I have moved a load bearing beam before, knocked down tons of walls, added ductwork, installed a gas fireplace, removed a cast iron tub and so much more. One of the more labor intensive projects was scrapping a vaulted popcorn ceiling. On the top rung of my tallest ladder I could barely reach. It was horrible getting that popcorn off and then painting the ceiling. While I was up there I figured it was smart to remove the air vents and replace them with new ones. I noticed after removal that the ductwork wasn’t centered on the vent. It actually was off by about two to three inches to the left. That meant all the air conditioning leaving the vent was basically getting trapped in the wall. I always wondered why the living room was so hot. That is unfortunately one of those things I just didn’t have time to fix. It wouldn’t add value to the house or make a sale. So I covered it up with a new vent. I feel bad that some families are going to have high energy bills though because of duct placement.

Space heater

As an influencer, I find myself being invited to a lot of events involved with more about Heating, Ventilation & A/C systems; My work involves reviewing modern companies in the air conditioner plus air quality in the market.

I had acquired an invitation to launch a modern contractor that had recently entered the market.

I was gleeful about this modern contractor because of the great plus exciting approach it was bringing to the field. They were employing Heating, Ventilation & A/C workers with the basic certification plus then training them in modern plus some of the old systems. They also had a good plus wide variety of unit that improved the lives of people. As I did our research, I discovered they were our local maintenance providers. They had done the Heating, Ventilation & A/C maintenance including ductwork cleaning plus AC filter updatement at our neighbor’s house. It is smart to guess the contractor you are promoting. They were even going to do their launch differently from how other companies had done. They would hold a raffle ticket competition plus supply the attendants some of the products plus services. Some of the products plus services that would be won included an indoor air cleaning system, a free AC care session as well a free air conditioner install. This exciting launch had drawn a huge crowd plus a lot of media attention which was good for the modern contractor. I got to the event early, which was an accomplishment. The launch was successful plus the contractor got to showcase their effective a/c care program plus their skilled air conditioner experts, however when it came to the winners of the prizes, I was gleeful to discover that I had won a free installation of our modern media air cleaner. My plus one also acquired free quality AC service.

Commercial air conditioning system