Things you can do yourself.

How Often to Change Your HVAC Filter

There is no single right answer, and anyone who gives you one without asking about your house is guessing. Filter life depends on thickness, what is in your air, and how hard the system is running. Here is how to find your own interval and buy the right filter.

What to Set Your Thermostat To, Season by Season

Numbers first: roughly 76 to 78 in summer and 66 to 70 in winter. What matters more is what you do around those numbers, how far you set back when nobody is home, and whether you heat with a heat pump, because a heat pump changes the answer.

What to Check Before You Call for Service

A fair number of no heat and no cool calls turn out to be a flipped switch, a dead battery or a filter nobody has touched since spring. Running this list takes ten minutes and may save you a service call. We would rather tell you that honestly.

Getting a Maryland House Ready for Cold Weather

Winter here is not brutal, but it is long and it swings. Most of December through February sits in the 20s and 30s, with a few single digit mornings and an ice storm or two. That pattern is hard on heating equipment and on plumbing. A few hours in October prevents most of it.

HVAC Work You Can Do Yourself, and the Work You Should Not

Plenty of HVAC advice online is either selling you something or scaring you into calling. This page tries to be neither. Some of this work is genuinely yours to do, and doing it well saves real money. A short list is not, and the reasons behind each one are worth understanding.