Fall pollen is in the air. In the early part of the season, it's blooming weeds; later grass pollen starts to fly. Here are a few tips to bring relief to the allergy sufferers in your family:

1. Control your home's humidity 
   and with it some of the most virulent allergens.
   
   Mold & Mildew. Although generally confined to damp areas like basements, crawl spaces and bathrooms, their spores are dispersed in the air and can infect your entire home.
   
   Dust mites. These microscopic creepy-crawlies thrive in high humidity. They live in mattresses, upholstery, carpets and other home fabrics. Their waste products and dead body parts are among the most irritating triggers to allergy and asthma.
   
   Frequent vacuuming; weekly washing of bed linens and mattress covers in hot water; and replacement of heavy drapery, rugs and carpets with hard surface window treatments and flooring will control dust mites, but by far the best solution is to control your home's humidity. Where humidity is kept below 50%, these creatures dessicate and die.
   
   Stan has high humidity solutions including advanced air conditioners and heat pumps with built-in humidity controls as well as professional dehumidifiers that can either operate as stand-alones or be incorporated into your home comfort system. These offer triple the performance of standard dehumidifiers with less than two-thirds the operating cost.
    
2. Keep doors and windows closed even on the most inviting fall day.
   Rather let your air conditioner continue to run even when temperatures are moderate.
   
   Nothing is more natural than the desire to throw open windows after a hazy hot and humid summer. But for the allergy sufferers in your life, this just means more red noses, scratchy throats, wheezing and labored breathing. Keeping your air conditioner running will circulate your home's air through its air filter. With the fall's moderate temps, the cost will not be burdensome.
   
   Those with high efficiency systems have the added advantage of a two-speed compressor and variable speed blower. In fall, these systems run at lower more energy-efficient speeds. And because of the efficiency of their DC powered blowers, fan can be set to run continually for maximum air circulation and filtration even when cooling is not required.
   
   ALWAYS CHECK YOUR FILTER EACH MONTH AND CHANGE IT WHEN DIRTY. This will not only keep your homes air clean, but it keep your system running efficiently. If you have not done so already, sign up for Stan's FREE monthly reminders.
    
3. Consider upgrading your air filter.
   
   This is NEVER SOMETHING YOU SHOULD DO YOURSELF! The "high efficiency" filters sold in home centers and hardware stores WILL obstruct the airflow so critical to your comfort and to your system's energy-efficiency. The consequences are grave including damage to expensive compressors and fan motors. 
   
   Stan has solutions designed to have minimal impact on airflow. These include 95% efficient media filters and the revolutionary AccuClean^TM which captures 99.98% of allergens including dust, pollen, pet dander, dust mite allergens, mold spores, cooking grease, and tobacco smoke. AccuClean is the best whole-house air cleaner, PERIOD! 8X more effective than the best HEPA room appliance. 100X more effective than standard 1" filters or ionic typre room appliances.
    
4. Consider adding the active TEK(TM) 2000 Ozone-FREE state-of-the art air scrubber to your system. This low maintenance unit is installed in your ductwork or plenum to treat all air circulating through your home comfort system. It utilizes tested ActivePure(R) technology to "significantly reduce odors, visible smoke in the air and to treat contamination on surfaces. It is proven effective against:

• Bacteria & viruses
• Pet odors
• Cooking odors
• Mold spores
• Tobacco smoke
• VOCs (volatile organic compounds) found in household cleaners, insecticides, upholstery & carpet treatments, and in the engineered materials used in furniture & cabinetry.

Here's how it works.

5. Keep pets away from allergy sufferers. As much as you love them, pets bring in plenty of outdoor allergens -- especially this time of year. Their dander is also an irritant. Obviously the best solution is to keep them out doors, but if that's not possible, you should maintain at least one pet-free room (preferably a bedroom) where your allergy sufferer can find relief.
6. Change clothes and shower when you come in from outdoor activities. This time of year, even a short walk or time spent in the yard can cover you with allergens. These can then be tracked through the home and deposited on furniture. 

These are just a few tips from your friends at Stan Perkoski's home services. To learn more, schedule a No-Pressure No-Obligation Consultation with your Stan Perkoski's professional.

Five things that can keep your air conditioner from functioning properly.

With our service area's Delaware, Pennsylvania & Maryland climate, comfort is far more a question of humidity control than of mere cooling. In fact, if your AC is operating efficiently, you'll feel comfortable even at a higher thermostat setting. This can significantly lower your summer electric bills.

Some of the things that prevent your AC from removing humidity include:

1. Oversized systems
2. Improper installation
3. Neglected maintenance
4. Improper refrigerant charging
5. Leaking or poorly designed ductwork.

Any one of these conditions can lead to short-cycling. What that means is that the thermostat's target temperature is reached BEFORE sufficient humidity has been removed. Your first reaction will be to further lower the thermostat in search of comfort. Unfortunately the result is only cold damp uncomfortable air and a lot of wasted electricity.

The first step toward achieving cooling comfort and efficiency is to schedule Stan's Precision AC maintenance service. When he arrives, your Stan Perkoski professional will ask about your home's summer comfort. Be sure to let him know about any temperature swings you may be experiencing, areas that don't heat or cool sufficiently, if and how often you may be making adjustments to the thermostat. That information will help him zero in on solutions to your summer comfort problems.

Most often, routine maintenance and some minor adjustments are all that are needed. Sometimes ductwork repair or modifications are required. If the time is approaching for replacement, you'll be happy to know that many of today's more advanced controls monitor humidty as well as temperature. With these, your new system will maximize comfort while significantly reducing energy use.

If you're not happy with your summer comfort or think your electric bills have been too high, schedule precision maintenance now. Your 100% satisfaction is guaranteed. If your AC were to fail anytime this season, you'll enjoy priority service PLUS a full refund for the maintenance service charge.

If your AC's age (10+ years) or low efficiency rating suggest that replacement may be a better course, schedule a no-obligation no-pressure consultation with your Stan Perkoski's professional.

NOTE: Be sure to ask for Stan's FREE life-extending water heater inspection with every AC repair or maintenance service. 

Ductless Mini Split: The Perfect Air Conditioning Solution for Homes and Added Spaces Where Ductwork Is Not Practical.

The condensing unit sits outside the home while the small indoor unit is positioned high on the wall to control and direct airflow. A handy remote control makes for easy adjustments to your comfort preferences.

These ductless mini split systems are available as both cooling-only as well as full-featured heat pumps to provide energy-efficient heating and cooling to slect areas of your home. Single zone and multi-zone systems are available.

The heat pump's ultra-efficient heating is the perfect supplement to expensive oil heating in many older homes.

Installation is quick and easy. The only modification to your Delaware, Maryland or Pennsylvania home is a single 3-inch hole to accommodate electrical wiring and copper tubing.

When our Delaware, Maryland and Pennylvania temperatures soar, your A/C is stressed to the max. Supplementing with fans is a great way to stay comfortable without lowering your thermostat. In fact, you may even be able to raise that temperature setting for greater savings without sacrificing comfort.

Most people use fans to keep cool when the A/C is not running. But they can also efficiently supplement your A/C. Here's what to do:

1. Change the switch on your ceiling fan to have the blade turn slowly in a clockwise direction. This will not blow air directly on you -- rather, it will pull colder air that otherwise would settle at floor level and circulate it throughout the room. This air movement over your skin helps your body to stay cool and dry.Do this only when you occupy a room. A ceiling fan running in an empty room just wastes energy. 
    
2. If you have one of today's more efficient systems with a variable speed blower, we recommend that you set the thermostat to the fan on position throughout the cooling season. That will gently circluate treated air throughout your home. This circulation not only will keep you cooler but has the added benefit of keeping your home's air cleaner with greater volume passing through the air filter. Best of all, these blowers operate with low cost direct current (DC) rather than with a conventional blower's more expensive alternating current (AC).

​We trust these tips will keep you cool and dry throughout the beastly days of summer. If something does go wrong, give us a call at 800-PERKOSKI 800-737-5675. A member of our team will take your call 24/7/365.

If you haven't done so already, schedule your annual maintenance service now. It's never too late. There's no better way to assure a comfortable problem-free summer. And if your A/C does break down later this season, you'll enjoy priority service AND we'll refund the cost of the maintenance service.

NOTE: Be sure to ask for Stan's FREE life-extending water heater inspection included with every repair and maintenance service.

Find Your Air Conditioner's S.E.E.R.

The chart below traces the history of the S.E.E.R. for residential air conditioners:

**Minimum U.S. allowable for Southeast Region including Delaware (DE) and Maryland (MD) effective January 1, 2015.
NOTE: If you're not sure when yours was installed, find the model number on the nameplate of your unit, and give us a call at 800-227-8667. 

As the number increases, your energy use for the same level of cooling decreases proportionally. That means that today's minimum allowable standard 14 S.E.E.R. unit installed today will use half the energy of a 7 S.E.E.R. unit installed in the 1980s. A new 16 S.E.E.R. unit installed today will be 60% more efficient than a 10 S.E.E.R. system from the early 1990s.

Find Your Savings.

This next chart illustrates the savings owners can expect from a high efficiency replacement in a typical 2,000 sq. ft. Delaware, Maryland or Pennsylvania home.

In fact, your real savings are actually likely to be even higher than these estimates. Here’s why:

The estimates assume:

• That the system you are replacing was installed properly. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that “nearly half of all heating and cooling in the U.S. never performs to its advertised capacity due to incorrect installation.”
• That it has been maintained regularly. A neglected system typically loses between 3% and 10% efficiency per year.
• That your ductwork is properly designed and not leaking due to poor installation, aging seals or foundation settlement. The U.S. Department of Energy warns that such leaks rather than the equipment itself are “the real source of (energy efficiency) problems.”

​
Learn what you can expect in your home.
No Obligation. No Pressure. No Fooling.

Unfortunately this time of year a few of our competitors make some pretty outrageous offers. Sometimes this comes in the form of a single price for a replacement system for any home regardless of size; sometimes it's a quote that is far below anyone else's.

The U.S. Department of Energy's energysaver.com website estimates that "nearly half of all heating and cooling equipment in the U.S. never performs to its advertised capacity due to incorrect installation."

In our experience, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true. Such low price contractors are likely cutting corners somewhere, or they will find ways to pad the bill once they're in your door.

Why gamble with a system that will determine your family's comfort and a large piece of your household budget for a decade or more?

Our FREE Contractor Standards Guide shows what to look for AND what to look out for when choosing a heating/cooling contractor. You'll know what to ask and how to be assured that you'll actually get the value promised by the manufacturer's label.

Download yours now.

Schedule a no-pressure no-obligation consultation.

According  to experts, the 2015 spring allergy season is predicted to be a bad one. Stan recommends two state-of-the art solutions to make your entire home a haven for the allergy sufferers in your family.

1. State-of-the-art air filtration.  Ours not only eliminates dust, mold spores and other allergens, it also captures and kills cold and flu viruses.
2. A space-age "air scrubber." This revolutionary technology literally destroys mold spores, VOCs (pollutants from engineered construction materials and household chemicals), viruses, odors and other pollutants in the air while disinfecting surfaces in your home.

A large number of portable air cleaners are available at home centers and on the internet. These range from relatively ineffective small table-top units to large noisier units that can at best treat the air in a single room. Their contribution to healthy air is largely a factor of the volume of air they handle.

Whole home solutions incorporated into your home's heating and cooling system are by far the most economical approach to improving indoor air quality. These collect and destroy irritants from the air circulating through the ductwork thus delivering clean conditioned air to every room in your home.

Many manufacturers and their representatives among our competitors offer a host of air cleaning "solutions" backed by wide-ranging claims of effectiveness. But after a careful study of all the available data, Stan has narrowed his recommendations to the only two products that are firmly supported by university research:

1. The revolutionary AccuClean^TM system: With 98.98% removal of pollutants including dust, pollen, cooking grease, tobacco smoke, bacteria and the common influenza A virus, AccuClean is simply the BEST home air cleaning system in the nation, PERIOD! This finding was demonstrated by research conducted by the Harvard School of Public health in conjunction with scientists at Environmental Health and Engineering,
   
   Unlike many electronic air cleaners on the market, the AccuClean^TM system is specifically engineered to fall well below the 50 ppb (parts per billion) FDA voluntary emission limit for medical devices. In fact, testing by third parties indicated that there's no more ozone in a home with AccuClean than already naturally occurs in the environment.
   
   Ozone, often referred to as  "smog," is an invisible gas made up of three oxygen molecules. The American Lung Association warns that ozone  "irritates and inflames the respiratory system causing "shortness of breath, chest pain, wheezing and coughing." Most at risk include very young children, seniors and people with chronic lung disease including asthma and COPD.
    
2. The Air Scrubber by Aerus with NASA-developed Activpure^(R) technology -- Ozone FREE: This low maintenance unit is installed in your ductwork or plenum to treat all air circulating through your home comfort system. It utilizes tested ActivePure^(R) technology "to significantly reduce odors, visible smoke in the air, and treat contamination on surfaces." It is proven effective against:

• Bacteria & viruses*
  *Although it's tooo soon as of this writing for the ActivePure technology to be tested on the specific COVID-19 Coronavirus, validated test results have demonstrated a 99+% destruction of similar viruses on surfaces.
• Pet odors
• Cooking odors
• Mold spores
• Tobacco smoke
• VOCs (volatile organic compounds) found in household cleaners, insecticides, upholstery & carpet treatments, and in the engineered materials used in furniture and cabinetry.

Here's how it works:

For years, manufacturers and HVAC contractors have incorporated UV bulbs into their air cleaning systems in an attempt to purify indoor air. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the effectiveness of such systems has been limited by the one-inch rule. That means that a pollutant must come within one inch of the UV bulb preferably in still air to cause even a minimal amount of purification.

The next generation technology to come along -- photo chemical oxidation (PCO) -- coupled the UV light with a titanium dioxide catalyst to chemically generate a plasma of oxides and hydroxyls. When circulated through the air, these free radicals would come in contact with pollutant molecules and neutralize them by oxidizing them into harmless water vapor.

But there was a problem: the process produced ozone -- a respiratory irritant.

The active Tek^TM system utilizes a new ozone-free technology developed by NASA scientists to safely scrub the air and surfaces in spacecraft. This same radiant catalytic ionization (RCI) technology is incorporated into the activ Tek^TM system. Here a high-intensity UVX bulb is surrounded by a honeycomb matrix coated with four rare metals to produce a plasma of safe oxides and hydroxyls. Its effectiveness is verified by on-going research conducted by Dr. James Marsden and his team at Kansas State University. That research has been augmented by on-going studies on particle removal at both the University of Cincinnati and Syracuse University.

activTek^TM is the ONLY air purification company that can provide scientific substantiation of kill rates of over 99.99% of the likes of bacteria, viruses, mold and even Avian Flu.

Protect your family from seasonal allergies, from mold spores, dust mite allergens, biological/chemical contaminants, cold/flu viruses and more throughout the year.

Give us a call at 866-737-5675 or register online to schedule a no-pressure, no-cost, no-obligation consultation with your Stan Perkoski's professional.

Act Like Your Life Depends on It; IT DOES!

Here's story our friend Lincoln Stubbs tells about his experience with a Massachusetts homeowner and her broken furnace. This life-threatening situation carries an important message to all who heat their homes and water with natural gas, oil or propane.

"Last month, a Plymouth (MA) customer called because her furnace wasn't working properly. I soon found a cracked heat exchanger. I immediately opened doors and windows throughout the home. Deadly carbon monoxide gas had been escaping into the home. We installed a new furnace.

"When I asked the homeowner if she had carbon monoxide detectors, she reported that they had in fact gone off a few days earlier so had been unplugged to stop the noise. But nothing was checked!

"When I asked if she had been having any health issues, the homeowner said that she had experienced headaches and dizziness and had even visited the hospital emergency room one day."

THIS HOMEOWNER AND HER FAMILY WERE SLOWLY BEING POISONED. 
THE DOCTORS MISDIAGNOSED, AND SENT HER BACK TO THE HOME!

Here's what you should do whenever your carbon monoxide detector sounds:

1. GET FRESH AIR IMMEDIATELY! Open doors and windows.
2. THEN LEAVE THE HOME, AND CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. They'll check for carbon monoxide. If they detect it, they'll turn off all fuel burning appliances. That will include your fireplace, oil or gas-burning furnaces, water heater, generator, stove, oven, space heater, etc.
3. GO TO AN EMERGENCY ROOM AND REPORT THAT YOU SUSPECT CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING. THIS IS IMPORTANT! The emergency room medical team that treated Lincoln's customer did not diagnose carbon monoxide poisoning and sent them home. That's not unusual. Such symptoms are often mistaken for those of flu, food poisoning or other common respiratory ilnesses. It is critical that you tell them that your carbon monoxide detector went off!
4. CALL YOUR STAN PERKOSKI'S PROFESSIONALS TO CHECK YOUR FUEL-BURNING APPLIANCES BEFORE RETURNING THEM TO SERVICE.

​Carbon monoxide poisoining is serious business.

It's the leading cause of poisoning deaths in the U.S. This silent killer is colorless and odorless. At high levels, it can kill within minutes. Even low levels can cause shortness of breath, dizziness, nausea and headaches and may have long-term effects on health. 

PREVENTION IS THE KEY!

Of course your best protection lies in prevention

1. EQUIP YOUR HOME WITH A WORKING CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTOR. NEVER disconnect its power supply, and ALWAYS check batteries. (We send all newsletter readers email reminders twice a year. Let us know about friends and loved ones you'd like us to include.)
2. SCHEDULE ANNUAL HEATER MAINTENANCE SERVICE. Had this homeowner followed this recommendation, Lincoln's team would have detected the problem well before her heat exchanger failed.

If you have not yet had your heater inspected this season, schedule now. If your home does not have a working carbon monoxide detector, contact us. Ours detect low level contamination that standard store-bought detectors miss. If you have not checked your detector's batteries in the last six months, do so immediately.

Please take this advice seriously. It can save your life and the lives of those you most love.

Stan

Click on link for latest seasonal savings tips and offers: http://conta.cc/YWCOGS