The signs of fall approaching have come. The lush green leaves have begun to show their age, green lawns have gone dormant and some cooler evenings have arrived. Make no mistake, some warm and humid weather is yet to come and there are some of us that will have air conditioner breakdowns and have to decide on buying a new air conditioner.

There have been big changes in air conditioning and huge changes yet to come. The recent federally mandate increase in air conditioning efficiency made air conditioners more expensive, but was largely invisible to the public. The next big change is coming in about one year and it is huge.

Air conditioners run on Freonâ, or so many people think. Details and facts about it are boring but lets call it refrigerant for this blog. Refrigerant comes in many types and what type is used depends on if we are cooling the air in your home, in your car, in your refrigerator or in a food store freezing things or cooling beer or making ice cubes. There is no one size fits all purposes type of “Freon”.

About ten years ago, in preparation for next year, a new refrigerant that is ozone friendly was introduced. It replaced the old favorite R22, and is called R410A. Some call it Puronâ. Call it anything you like but chemically it is R410A and air conditioners that use it are offered by all popular makers of furnaces and air conditioners.

What does this boring information mean to you? At the end of next year, air conditioners that use the old favorite refrigerant, R22, can no longer be made. R22 is also mandated to be produced less and less. This means that R22 to recharge your air conditioner will become more and more expensive! Supply and demand.

So we have a choice when we need to buy a new air conditioner now. Will it use the soon to be obsolete R22 or the refrigerant of the future, R410A? It’s like buying a car or truck and deciding if it runs on gasoline or diesel.

I work in the wholesale distribution end of heating and air conditioning. We sell several different brands of furnaces and air conditioners in many states so have a good idea of what’s going on out there. Some dealers are selling their customers only R410A air conditioners. Some still sell R22. Often this is because the price of the equipment is still a little less than R410A and because they are not comfortable with the new R410A.

So my first point is if you are going to buy a new air conditioner for your house, buy one that uses R410A. The only reason that I could see to buy R22 equipment is if you are selling your house soon or short-term cost is more important than long-term expense. But wait. There is more!

A recent blog encouraged new building codes to prepare for the increased use of electricity to heat our homes and fuel our future electric cars at home. When you buy a new air conditioner, you can go a step further into the future and buy a hybrid air conditioner that can also heat your home. This is called a heat pump.

Heat pumps have been around for many years but the notion that they are for warmer southern states have held back the popularity of them here, until recently. I won’t bore you with the technical stuff that excites guys like me. The facts are that heat pumps are air conditioners that don’t only work a few weeks in the summer but also work year around heating your house too!

Heat pumps can heat your house at times for less than the most efficient natural gas furnace. The savings can be greater if you heat with oil or propane. True, it won’t keep the house warm by itself at colder temperatures, typically below 30 to 40 degrees, but an often-overlooked fact makes them attractive even in places like Alaska. 

In our area, if you count the number of heating hours spent above the 30 to 40 degree range, you will find that it is around one half of our heating season! That means your furnace would run around half of what it otherwise would.

True, heat pumps don’t create heat for free, but the trend is for fossil fuels to increase in price greater than that for electricity. An air conditioner that you buy now will be there on average for fifteen or twenty years. So think about fuel cost trends and a heat pump installed now makes good sense.

How much will a heat pump save you? Many dealers don’t like to sell them because many customers want a figure written down on this. Energy prices are very dynamic and there is no crystal ball to assure what your savings will be. However, experts agree that buying a heat pump now is a forward-looking choice.

Whatever you decide, make sure it uses R410A instead of R22 refrigerant!

In the past I've criticized new construction as putting a load on our dwindling water resource. This, even though the business that I'm in is dependent on new construction. Briefly, I don't believe that long time residents of the city or county should be put in the same boat of inconvenience to accommodate development and expansion. Those dwindling the resource should be the ones to carry the load. Water wise, this would be prohibiting watering lawns, gardens and washing cars in new developments except with water gathered from cisterns or other non-aqufier sources. On site water recycling of gray water should be included with conservation efforts.

Preparation for the diminished used of petroleum should be implemented in the the building code too.  Electricity is the energy of the future. We will power anything with a petroleum engine with it and we will heat our homes with it. As an expert in the heating and cooling business, I can see gas furnaces going the way of oil furnaces in the next twenty years. Honda has shown a natural gas powered fuel cell generator to recharge electric cars and provide power for the home's electric furnace and heat pump/air conditioner. For those of you with hot water heat, there have been electric powered boilers so don't feel left out.

GM will be introducing the electric car, the Volt, which will run entirely on electricity, recharge at home if desired, but have gasoline back-up so you don't get stranded. In my needs, the electricity range is adequate for most all of my driving around. So the Volt can replace one of my cars and the other can be the guzzler used to pull the boat and so forth.

The building code should anticipate the plumbing changes and increased electrical service needs of the near future and require that it be install NOW in new construction and remodeling of existing homes and buildings. 

Last heard from Mama Celeste, there is an abundance of things since the rain! Around the Bukosky home it is mosquitos and maple seedlings.

I've spend a few dollars in trying to have a nice lawn and pretty much got the weeds under control and the grass lush and dark green. The maple seeds, helicopters to some, were also in abundance and practically paved the driveway. I've been amazed how many maple tree saplings are growing and how easily they sprout and root. It seems that the seeds need only be about an inch from the soil and it sprouts and takes a root hold.

I'm sure everyone is busy swatting mosquitos too. My grass was two days late in getting it's twice weekly mowing and was a bit tall. As I navigated the back lawn with the mower, the critters flew up in small clouds! I soon went to the car and got my can of Deep Woods Off and sprayed on a film of protection.  I bought this can just last week while on the way to Minooka Park with Kanook. Walmart was on the way and as I passed a couple check-out isles, there was a large display of OFF prepared for people like me. It made for one of the quickest Walmart trips that I ever had.

We also finally have some of the warm and slightly humid weather of the summer. Guys in my business have bee anxously waiting for it. Many air conditioning technicians have not been getting a full week of work in until now. So, remember to keep those air filters clean and if you haven't had your air conditioner checked over for a while, call you local heating and air conditioning company and schedule a checkover.

I never thought of dumping the stale water from Kanook's water bowl in the plants around the house. I'm sure after spilling the water on the finished wood of the bay window, that effort would stop quickly. I'm waiting for someone to explain how they are melting all the snow on their property into a cistern for use in the spring and summer to water their grass and wash their car, parked on the grass, of course. Actually, I have washed the car on the front lawn and used to wash the motorcycle in the back yard until the water softened the ground and it tipped over. However, repeated incidents of that did eliminate the need to have the lawn aerated!

Putting politics and emotions about our water situation aside, conservation is a noble effort. In my younger days, the Saturday night bath was customary.  Now, I refuse to stop my daily showers.  In one of the chain mailings that I receive at work against the will of our IT department, was one speaking of personal hygiene in the not too distant past. I was surprised to see things done to replace the daily (or weekly) bath or shower.  For instance, it is why perfume and cologne was in wide use. Another was about the use of flowers during a ceremony.  I don't dare go any further than that.  Another was an actual magazine ad from pre-WWII days where Lysol was actually recommend for cleaning something other than floors.  All this made it clear why the Bible refers to scented oils so much back then.

There is a serious side to this blog however.  You know that I'm in the heating and cooling business and one of our products is central humidifiers.  Humidifiers evolved from pans of water in the furnace with evaporator plates or water wheels to evaporate the water into the air-stream.  What remained was a crusty container able to breed most any spore that passed it's way.

Next came humidifiers with water panels or pads, that had fresh water running over them to keep them clean and help reduce mineral build up. It seems like there is a pattern here. Anything healthy requires lots of water. These newer humidifiers allowed a fair amount of water to go down the drain.  I'm sure someone in the city had discovered that they can reroute the drain hose into a pail and water their flowers with it

For commercial jobs that needed lots of water for humidity, steam generating devices have been used for many years. One of our local furnace companies, Mueller Climatrol made a steam humidifier for residential use, but that and the company are in the history books now. Which leads me to the point of my blog.  Honeywell has just introduced a state of the art residential steam humidifier.  What water isn't boiled off to humidify the home, is flushed out from time to time to keep minerals under control.  I endorse this Honeywell Steam Humidifier as the top choice if you are in the market for a whole house humidifier that conserves water.  These can be purchased from your favorite furnace company.  It is so new that they might not know about it.  Ask them to check with their distributor about it.