Whole-Home Comfort: AC, Steam Humidifiers and More Explained for HVAC in Sherwood Park
Hey, we’re back at Hinse Mechanical YouTube channel, and I’m here with Adrien Hinse. He is the sales technician for Hinse Brothers Mechanical, and today we’re going to be talking about air conditioners. All right, Adrian, let’s get started with the questions right off the hop here. So, you know, we live in Canada, it gets cold here, and the argument I hear from a lot of people in Edmonton is that, oh, you don’t need an air conditioner. I mean, it’s only hot for like a week of the year, blah blah blah. So, with that in mind, are air conditioners becoming more and more common in Edmonton and Sherwood Park area?
Absolutely. Yeah, a lot of people will say to me, you know, I only use my air—I’d only use an air conditioner for one to two weeks a year. And the truth of the matter is, you’d use it a lot more than you think.
So, in the winter time, we get to basically set our temperature where we want and leave it there. Right. Right. So, we could—we have better comfort in the winter time, which is strange to say because your home is actually set up for the temperature you want all the time. And we do the same thing with air conditioning. So, rather than being 2° or a degree or 5° warmer than what you would prefer, an air conditioner—we run—I run mine for roughly 5–6 months a year. Depends on the year.
Air Conditioning Helps You Sleep Better
And I sleep better, you know. I’m more comfortable. I find it easier if I decide I want to work from home that day. Yeah. I’m more comfortable at home. I don’t have to go to the office for AC. Yeah. But the biggest thing I found was I get to sleep without having to hide in the basement or anything like that. Right. Right.
So, more and more people are buying into the idea that air conditioning is a good idea, which it is. You know, it seems like we’re getting warmer and warmer. A lot of people are telling me, you know, years ago I didn’t need it because it didn’t actually get very hot, and—which I know it did get hot since I was a kid—it gets hot every summer, but maybe our tolerance level goes down a bit, you know?
Yeah. And maybe the—maybe it is getting hotter out as well, right? Or longer periods of time where it’s plus 30. I remember a few years back we had—it was plus 30 for maybe a month, right? And it started in May long weekend, and I was sitting at my parents house, you know, and having a barbecue, and the phone just wouldn’t stop ringing, right? It just—ringing off the hook. People, you know, just want air conditioners, right? So, they’re becoming more common here for sure.
Air Conditioners Are Affordable Now
Yeah, absolutely. And, like, I’m a little bit older than you, and I remember even when I was a youngster, you know, in elementary school, there were summers when it was hot for a long time. And, you know, so it’s nothing new, but people would say, “Ah, air conditioner, that’s only for rich people.” But, I mean, I think they’re more affordable. And I—for me it’s all all about comfort, right? All about having more com—comfort in the home. Being able to sleep is a huge one for me because I run hot. So, having an air conditioner, I mean it’s a game changer for us. So, I’m going to ask you a little bit about brands, okay? Because, you know, you are a mechanical contractor, HVAC contractor in Sherwood Park, Beaumont, and Edmonton. So, let’s talk about brands. So, what brands do you guys sell and support, and why?
So, we’ve got several different tiers of products. Basically, kind of our primary line is Linux. Linux has got a great lineup for higher end products. So, super quiet—from super quiet heat pumps to variable speed air conditioners to multi-stage—like, two-stage is kind of going away, mostly going towards variable capacity. So, Linux is kind of our higher end product, and then they actually have sister companies as well. Duchene, Concord—those actually give us a little bit more economically friendly options for people as well. So, we we’d like to be able to offer a range of products that suit your needs best, right? So, we can go from a standard AC outside, you know, about 76 dB, decent—decent efficiency down to about 15 sir 2. That’s kind of our lowest efficiency that we work with nowadays, all the way up to, you know, in the 20s, 24 SEO 2 efficiency, depends on what you’re looking at. Those are typically communicating variable speed equipment.
Variable Speed Equipment Offers More Variety
The idea behind a variable speed piece of equipment is we can now cool on lower fan speeds. So, typically with air conditioning, you’ve got one speed, right? All in or nothing, right? So, you know, if you’re not sitting there blowing your hair back over the register, if you’ve got a variable speed piece of equipment, it’ll run at low fan speeds. You do need a furnace to match that as well. You can’t just get a variable speed air conditioner. You would need to pair it up with variable speed equipment—furnace or fan coil, that type of thing. Right. And why—why Lennox chain of products in particular? Basically, they’re robust—never have—like, rarely ever have problems. When we put the equipment in, it just works, you know. It’s high quality equipment. They also have entry-level equipment that’s—it’s quite similar to the sister companies they have as well, but the sister companies don’t do any advertising. So, that’s why their price is a little bit better, a little bit lower.
Okay. But we primarily use the Lennox product for their higher—higher end products.
Okay. So, higher end, and are they, like, more reliable? Easy for serviceability, getting parts, that kind of stuff.
Yeah. So, the higher end—like, they’ll basically diagnose themselves. You know, a lot of people say, you know, more moving parts, more things to go wrong, but you’ve got a great warranty. You’ve got 10 years parts and labor warranty on the equipment. The super high-end equipment—it’s typically 12 years. Okay. But it virtually tells you—like, the new thermostats and that will tell us what’s going on. You know, it’s often it’s, you know, a control board or a motor or whatever needs to be replaced if it does—which we rarely need to, you know—a new piece of pro—piece of equipment to last quite a long time, right?
Central Air Conditioning Versus Mini Split Air Conditioning
All right. Let’s compare the benefits of a central AC versus a mini split. So, they’re both—they’re both good, but for different reasons. So, let’s, I guess, talk about—we’ve talked a little bit about central. Let’s talk about mini splits. So, in what scenario would you use a mini split AC unit?
So, ductless mini split is a great option for people that don’t have a ducted system. So, if you have a centrally ducted system, that means you have a furnace, main duct work, and that’ll transfer your hot and cold air throughout the building—the entire building—from one place. So, that’s centrally ducted. A ductless mini split—you’ll often see them in Asia. We do have them here actually in this building, you know, Spurrell and Associates. They are great when you don’t have the centrally ducted option. Yeah. Right.
So, if you’ve got boiler system for heat, you know, you got baseboard heating, you’ve got in floor heat, or a fan coil. Actually, a fan coil we could actually use as centrally ducted. But the mini splits—we put a small fan coil on the wall or even a console in each room. And the—actually, the remote control for that console or fan coil is your thermostat. Okay. So, the idea behind that is you can dial in your temperature wherever you’re at, you know, in your bedroom, in your living room, or whatever. You—you’ve got a zone. You can have a zoned system, right? Just by using the ductless mini split if you use multi heads or if you use multi- equipment, right, options. Yeah.
Yeah. So, for people who opted for—when they’re building their home, or for whatever reason they’ve got, you know, just baseboard heat—what—you know, even if you’re in an apartment, right? A lot of apartments use the ductless mini splits, too, because they typically have hot water boiler heat, and they’ve got it—u—they’ve got radiators on their walls that provide their heat. So, they are good candidates for that. What about someone who has, like, a larger home and, you know, they’ve got a master bedroom that just will not stay.
Temperature Control In Any Room
I was going to bring that up. You know, oftentimes they’ll have, like, a south facing or west facing bonus room over a garage or something. So, your garage is just cooking—producing all this heat—nowhere else to go. You’ve got maybe limited duct runs or something to that space, and your air conditioner just won’t keep up, right? So, that’s a great spot, too, to use a ductless mini split, right? We can—we can put the fan coil right in that room, and your—you’ve got your own thermostat, and basically top up the cooling—or even heating as well—down to, you know, about minus 30. It’ll give you some heat to top it up.
Nice. So, there’s a lot of options for people who want to stay cool or just be more comfortable in the house, right? Because nothing’s worse than, you know, you’re—you’re in your home and it’s uncomfortable, and you’re sweating, and it’s just—Yeah. Uncomfortable, not able to sleep properly and get good rest, right?
Absolutely.
Okay. So, let’s talk about humidity. So, Alberta typically is kind of dry. So, how does an air conditioning system, whether a ductless mini split or a central air, how does it affect the humidity of a house?
So, in the summertime, spring, fall, it’s actually—we have decent humidity. You know, it can be—I think right now it’s about 55 or something like that. But the air conditioner, when—when the humidity is a little high in the summertime and that, it’ll actually help bring that down, right? So, there are settings that we can use. It’ll run at low—depends on the AC you have—actually remove some of the humidity in the home. We can couple that with HRV. We can add an HRV to the system and help—help modify the humidity in the home that way. Okay.
Does Your Home Need A Dehumidifier?
You know, I’ve got a thermostat at my home. I’ve got the Lennox communicating, and I’ve got it tied in with a dual fuel system on a heat pump and um humidity control. And so, it’ll actually—when there’s too much humidity in the home—we can actually tie in dehumidifier as well if we wanted to. Okay. Right. And so that’s strictly to dehumidify the house. The air conditioner will give you a little bit of dehumidification, but not a lot. If you really have a problem, we can actually get a dehumidifier in there as well. So—but you typically don’t want to run your humidifier at the same time as your air conditioner. It’s going to produce a lot of extra condensation, right? So, typically we don’t have too much of an issue with having a dry home in the summertime.
Okay. So, it’s mainly just the winter time when things are really dry, especially when it’s super cold. You might want to add a humidification type of product. Now, I know we’re talking about air conditioners today, but maybe share a little bit about types of humidifiers that could possibly help in the winter time.
Yeah. So, probably the most common would be your flow through humidifier. They used to have the drum style, which would have water in a pan, and the drum would spin, and air would pass through. M—it’s a sponge, basically, but those were found to have issues with—you just get buildup of contaminants and stuff like that in the water. So, it’s not super good for air quality. With the air—with the flow through, it’ll flow down a panel. Water will flow down the panel when it’s in the heating cycle of your furnace and suck air through that—like a waterfall, basically—and add that to your duct work as it’s heating.
Is Steam Injection Right For Your Home?
Okay. Other options—like, higher end options—we look at steam injection. I’ve got the steam injection at my house because I do have a problem in the winter time. I do need it to be a little bit more humid, and I have that tied right into my thermostat, and it just automatically controls it. That will just tell the furnace, turn on the blower. Yeah. And with steam injection, you don’t have to be on a heating cycle. So, because it’s warm, it’ll disperse into the air a little bit easier with the steam. So, it’ll just turn on the airflow. I’ve got it set at, like, 400 CFM—I can adjust that—and it’ll just humidify the house as needed. I can dial it right into, you know—I like to keep my home fairly high humidity, like 45. Throughout the winter, and then when it gets super cold, to avoid all the ice build up on the windows, I’ll dial it down to about, you know, 35 or 30. Okay. To kind of avoid the windows, but if the windows have a lot of air gaps in that, you’re going to get ice build up that much easier.
Gotcha. Okay, cool. Well, thanks for sharing that about the humidification. I know it’s kind of an important thing for me, too, because, you know, I don’t like it super dry, right?
Hey, Adrian. So, what are some new technologies—new and upcoming technologies—about home comfort systems that Edmonton homeowners should know about?
New Technology in Home Comfort Systems
So, yeah, there’s—there’s quite a few things, and I like to—again, I like to test the products in my home, right? Give it a test. Things like introducing an HRV into the home will give you active ventilation. So, you’re—not only are you bringing fresh air into the home, you’re actually exhausting stale air at the same time. Okay? So, it’s a balanced system. It—it removes air at the same time it brings in fresh air. And the air that it’s removing, it uses to temper the air coming in, whether it’s to cool it a bit or warm it up. So, you’re not—in the winter time—you’re not just bringing in straight minus 30 air. Right. Right. It’ll actually temper it with air being exhausted, so you’re not losing that—as much of that—energy. And you can—you can adjust the temperature. So, I don’t want my HRV to run below minus 26. I set it up on my thermostat. Mhm. And not all thermostats are capable, but we do have that capability with, like, the higher end smart thermostats, right?
Well, we’re talking about some more high-tech stuff that that’s available for people, right? So, and we want to talk about that because, you know, we’re not just talking about a standard furnace or a standard anything. We want to know what—what are the best options. What are some new tech options that, you know, people could possibly benefit from?
Well, air quality’s kind of been one that’s really been coming in here. How do we better our air quality? One factor of that is the HRV I was talking about, or energy recovery ventilator as well. So, with an energy recovery ventilator, you don’t need to add a drain. So, it’ll actually transfer humidity. HRV—you have to have a drain off the unit because it’ll actually extract humidity out of the air. Okay. So, it’s also dehumidifying a little bit, right? Other things that we can do is we can add hepa filters, okay, to your system. UV lights. We’ve got air purification. Thermostats that’ll—actually, coupled with a smart air quality monitor—can tell you, hey, the air outside is worse than it is inside by sampling the air periodically. Don’t turn on the HRV. Gotcha.
So, when we’ve got a lot of smoke from the forest fires, things like that, and actually look at the forecast, get information on what the air quality is like, and it’ll just say, “I don’t want to bring fresh air in today. No, thank you very much.” It’ll shut the—it’ll shut the HRV off, and just use—it’ll recirculate the air using the hepa filter or the air purifier that you have in the home.
The Whole Home Comfort System
So, when I talk about a home comfort system, I’m talking about an entire system. You know, we start with the furnace—the heart of this operation. I go typically with at least a dual stage variable speed system so I can have multi-stage heating available, multi-stage cooling as well. Mhm. You know, couple that with a variable speed or multi-stage heat pump or air conditioner. Added comfort through having the multi-stages. We can add the air purifications. Super important. I have that in my home. You know, I can change the filter about once every 6 months. You know, it’s a little bit more expensive for the filter, but I’ve got 16 MV filtration. I’ve got a UV light, so it’s really clean in the air when it’s running—when the furnace is running. And smart monitor. I’ve got Wi-Fi access to my thermostat. The HRV integrated and dual fuel system, so I can operate electric heat through the heat pump or I can run gas. So, there’s a whole comfort system, including air cleaning, fresh air, right? Yeah. Variable speed heating and cooling. I can just dial in the temperature and humidity in the home.
So, basically, you don’t really want to leave your home at all because it’s just so nice in there, right?
Contact Hinse Brothers Mechanical For Heating and Cooling
I love—I love leaving home, but I also love when I come home, and, you know, the air is fresh. The temperature is exactly where I want it. I can monitor it from my phone. You know, if there’s—if there’s ever an issue come up, I get a notification on my phone—says, “Hey, you know, it hasn’t heated for however long. This is the temperature in the home,” right? So, it gives me a sense of ease and comfort, too. When I’m away, if I’m on a trip or something like that, I can just log right in and have a look through my app.
Awesome. What’s going on in the home, or—Yeah, that’s great. Well, thanks for sharing information with us about home comfort tech that people in Edmonton, Shard Park, and area would want to know about. So, if you’re interested in more—learning more about that, talk to Adrian at Hinse Brothers Mechanical. That’s hinsemechanical.com. And, yeah, hope to see you soon. Catch you on the next video. Thank you.