The winter weather certainly hung around for a long time, didn’t it? Nobody likes to deal with snow that far into the year, but we’re finally hitting the warm weather stride here in June. If you haven’t arranged for a visit from one of our HVAC experts to give your air conditioner a pre-season tune-up and inspection, it’s definitely not too late! The hottest weather is ahead of us, and as long as you’ve got your AC in good condition with routine maintenance before it starts to put in the heavy work, you should be in great shape for the season.
Red Rock Mechanical, LLC Blog: Posts Tagged ‘Burlington’
June Isn’t Too Late for Air Conditioning Maintenance!
Monday, June 11th, 2018
How Leaks Happen in Copper Pipes
Monday, May 28th, 2018
Corrosion is one of the great enemies of the pipes in a plumbing system. It is the main cause of leaks in residential plumbing, since it weakens pipe metal to the point where leaks will start up in multiple places. Eventually, the corrosion will destroy the pipe entirely.
“But I have copper pipes for my home. Copper doesn’t corrode.” Sorry to tell you this isn’t correct. Copper is a corrosion-resistant metal. But the same way that a water-resistant watch isn’t the same thing as a water-proof watch (you don’t want to dunk your watch down in a pool if it’s only water-resistant), a corrosion-resistant metal is not 100%-free from the effects of corrosion. There is a specific type of corrosion that affects copper pipes, and it’s the principal cause of leaking starting in these pipes.
Test and Maintain Your Sump Pump Now
Monday, May 14th, 2018
Do you have a sump pump installed in your home’s basement? We recommend most homes in the area have one, since it’s the best plan to prevent damage from flooding due to weather or a burst pipe. A sump pump activates automatically to remove the excess water from the lowest part of a house and transport it out to the wastewater system, a well, or an outside drainage ditch leading to the storm drains.
You already have a sump pump? That’s great. But do you know if you can depend on it to come on and work in case of flooding? A back-up emergency system isn’t much good if it won’t work when it’s supposed to. This is why you always test your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors—and it’s why you should check your sump pump in spring and have it maintained.
Why You Need a Professional for Kitchen Plumbing Repairs
Monday, April 16th, 2018
You’ve got trouble with the plumbing in your kitchen. It’s going to happen—there’s a lot of piping and appliances in this space, and it gets an enormous amount of work. But what do you do when you have a kitchen plumbing problem? Your first answer may be, “Get out the toolbox and that belt of special wrenches.” This is fine if you’re dealing with something like adjusting a loose washer in a leaky faucet. But for anything else, such as fixing a leaking drainpipe to removing a broken garbage disposal, we recommend you always call on a plumber. Not an amateur or “handyman.” No, a licensed professional plumber.
A Ductless Heating Installation: A Good February Investment
Monday, February 5th, 2018
February is a strange time when it comes to HVAC work for homes. Winter is still here, but now that we’ve moved into the second half of the season, people feel less willing to make big changes to their heating systems. They’ll call for repairs if they need them (at least, they should!), but heating upgrades or new system installations won’t be a priority when warm weather is coming closer.
But we can recommend a few good February investments—aside from those vital repairs—for your heating in Burlington, VT and your home’s HVAC system overall. Today we’re going to focus on one of the best: installing a ductless heating system.
Mid-Winter and Your Furnace: Why You May Need Service
Monday, January 22nd, 2018
The middle of the winter is the point when you may have concerns about the performance of your home’s furnace. It’s wise to be on the lookout for potential problems. It’s not only the coldest time of the year, but the furnace has done a half season of work and has another half ahead of it.
There are a number of reasons why you may need to have professionals give your furnace a look and make fixes and adjustments in mid-winter. Schedule your heater service in Burlington, VT or the surrounding areas to ensure you don’t have a furnace that fails for any of the following reasons:
Is Your Electric Furnace Not Up to the Task?
Tuesday, December 26th, 2017
There’s a good reason natural gas furnaces are common for heating in Burlington, VT: they have immense heat output that can overcome even the deepest cold days. And we have quite a few super-cold days in Vermont and New York! A gas furnace not only effectively warms up a house, it also saves money since natural gas costs less to use than electricity.
Natural gas, however, isn’t available to all homes in our area. Some homeowners prefer not to use it even if it is available because of safety concerns. For those homes, the electric furnace is always an option—and it can be an effective option as well.
But this winter, are you finding your house is colder than normal, even when you have the furnace turned up all the way? The electric furnace may not be up to its job. Let’s find out why.
The More You Know: Boilers Rarely “Boil” Today
Monday, December 11th, 2017
Furnaces have a long history as residential heating systems. After all, the first fireplaces were basically the original furnaces, and ever since people started to construct pipes connected to stoves to distribute heat to other parts of a building, furnaces have been the most common kind of central heating system.
But the boiler has a long history as well. Boilers didn’t become prominent in homes and commercial buildings until much later than furnaces, but they’ve been common since the 19th century. Boilers offer a number of excellent advantages that have kept them around for all those decades: energy-saving performance, clean heat that doesn’t blow around dust, and a toasty warm feeling that people often prefer to the forced-air comfort that comes from a furnace.
Boilers have changed immensely since their first introduction, of course. Perhaps the biggest change of all is that most boilers today don’t actually boil anything, but instead use hydronic power.
Watch for Boiler Repair Concerns Early in the Fall
Monday, October 2nd, 2017
We aren’t quite at the true heating season yet—the time of the year when home heaters turn on to provide warmth. Temperatures are still hovering in the cool-to-warm region. But it’s October, which means fall is here and just over the ridge is winter. If you use a boiler system to heat up your house in winter, you want to ensure that it’s in the best shape possible before the cold weather hits. You can do this by arranging for a heating tune-up and inspection through one of our preventative maintenance comfort plans.
But today we want to focus on what happens once your boiler actually gets to work—especially if you end up putting it to work before it has maintenance. We urge you to avoid this situation, but it can still happen. If it does (and even if you did have routine maintenance this year) look out for some of these early indications that you need to call us for boiler repair in Burlington, VT. The sooner you have the trouble fixed, the less expensive it is likely to be and the less long-term damage it will do to the boiler.
Some Important Kitchen Plumbing Jobs
Monday, September 4th, 2017
It may not seem like it, but the kitchen is not the area of your home that contains the most plumbing. That’s actually the bathrooms, which can account for more than 50% of all freshwater use in a house and contain vital fixtures compressed into a small space.
But the kitchen contains a large amount of plumbing, and many of the fixtures in it are unique to this space. Caring for the plumbing in your home requires knowledge of many different types of appliances and fixtures, whether you need to have new installations, basic repairs, extensive repiping, or regular maintenance. It takes people skilled with kitchen plumbing in Burlington, VT to get these jobs done—and that’s why you should always contact our plumbers, no matter what you need.
Below are a few important kitchen plumbing jobs you may require and which we can handle for you:
