The Right Home Temperature for Elderly Adults

Taking care of yourself as you get older becomes more difficult every year. There are a thousand different things you have to think about when it comes to your health and general well-being. The last thing on your mind is your home temperature. However, it's a more important issue than you think. Here's what you need to know:

Aging and Hypothermia

As you get older, you're more prone to a variety of different health issues, including some you might not realize, such as hypothermia. If you're over 65 and your internal body temperature drops below 95 degrees, it can cause problems with your heart, liver, kidneys, and more.

It's important to understand the signs of hypothermia. If you see someone is constantly shivering, their breathing is shallow, they have a weak pulse, their coordination is poor, they're slurring their speech, or they seem confused, disoriented, or low on energy, there could very well be a problem with their internal body temperature.

Avoiding Hypothermia

The best way to prevent hypothermia when you get older is to make sure your environment stays warm enough. Keep your home temperature at around 68 to 70 degrees. Then, seal all air leaks to make sure that heat isn't escaping. Consider a home energy audit to find out where in your home air is leaking out and then hire an HVAC contractor to seal them up. Common places for leaks include around windows, under doors, along your baseboards, and behind outlets and light switches.

You could use a space heater to warm up your bedroom, but be careful. Heaters can be a fire hazard if they're not used properly. If you're going to use one, be sure you do it safely. If you're not comfortable using a heater in your home, a better option is to add another blanket or two to the bed when it gets cold and dress in a couple more layers. Not only is it safer, it uses less energy.

For more help achieving your ideal home temperature, contact us at Air Assurance. We provide top-quality heating and cooling solutions to Broken Arrow.

Why You Shouldn’t Use Registers for Temperature Control

Even though you may read online articles about controlling the indoor temperature in a room by adjusting the register, it’s not a good idea in most situations. Doing so can harm your HVAC system, which will eventually cause a problem requiring professional attention.

What It Does

When you close off the vent in a room, the amount of air pressure in the ductwork increases. Ductwork is designed to carry a certain amount of air pressure and closing even one register, especially if it’s not far from the air handler, raises it beyond its capacity. Over time, the extra pressure will weaken the seams and joints in the ductwork, creating leaks.Leaking ductwork drives up energy bills because conditioned air is lost before it reaches your rooms. The leaks pull in dust from the areas through which they run. In homes with vented gas appliances like water heaters and furnaces, the leaks create backdrafts that can pull carbon monoxide into your rooms.It may seem like a contradiction, but the higher airflow pressure inside the ductwork will reduce the amount of air going through air handler, which stresses the heating and cooling components inside the air handler. In the summer, lower airflow contributes to a frozen evaporator coil that may contribute to compressor failure, the system’s most expensive part. In the winter, reduced airflow causes the furnace to run hotter, which harms all its parts.

Better Options

The best way to control the indoor temperature in a room is by using a zoning system, which uses automatic dampers in the ducts to control the airflow. Each zone has its own thermostat and when it needs conditioned air, it sends a signal to a control panel. This part turns the HVAC system on, opens the damper and the air flows to that zone.In lieu of zoning your home to control the indoor temperature, it’s a good idea to leave the registers open. In the long run, the energy costs will be lower than the repairs. For more information, contact Air Assurance, providing HVAC services for Broken Arrow homeowners.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in the Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about other HVAC topics, call us at 918-217-8273.

A Zoning System Gives You More Control Over The Heating And Cooling In Your Home

Your house doesn’t use one light switch to control all the lighting in your home does it? Then why would you use just one thermostat to control your heating and cooling systems? Zoning systems give you much more control over how you use your conditioned air, and provide you with a number of other benefits as well. By installing multiple thermostats in your house, each in control of a different zone, you are able to circumvent constructional features that would otherwise be creating inconsistencies in your home’s temperature. In a single-thermostat system, things like windows and cathedral ceilings can allow for heat to transfer in and out of your house or prevent air from circulating, creating warm or cool patches. When each thermostat is in control of a smaller, more manageable area, it prevents this from happening. Each zone gets the appropriate amount of air needed rather than air just being dispersed evenly.In order to obtain a steady temperature throughout your house, all you have to do is set all the thermostats to the same temperature. Certain zones will get more air than others to compensate for their needs, but you won’t feel those annoying warm or cool patches.However, one of the greatest benefits of zoning systems is the fact that you can intentionally set different temperatures in different parts of the house. This is convenient because various occupants of a house often disagree on what the temperature should be, an event so common it is referred to as the “battle of the thermostat”. For example, Mom can have the study a few degrees cooler than the living room that Dad is in without either person disrupting the other's comfort.Your HVAC technician will help you develop a zoning strategy that will help you get the most energy savings possible. By planning zones based on what rooms are used more often than others, you can set zones to energy-efficient modes to save more money.For more information on zoning systems, contact Air Assurancetoday. We proudly serve the Tulsa and Broken Arrow regions.Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  Air Assurance services Tulsa, Broken Arrow and the surrounding areas. Visit our websiteto see our current promotionsand get started today!      Photo courtesy ofShutterstock.