Home Care
Maintenance
*****
Student Manual
PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ANY MARKS IN THIS PUBLICATION
OVERVIEW
It is important to understand the purpose of this course. Every person has to live somewhere. In most cases, people live in single or multi-family dwellings. These dwellings are usually referred to as houses, but some people live in apartments, suites, condos, duplexes, four-plexes, manufactured homes, mobile homes, etc. There is a difference between a house and a home. A house is a building, comprised of a collection of systems and materials which combine to create a habitat for people to live in. A home is a house that offers a sense of safety and protection from the outside world. In this course you will be looking at the things you need to do or maintain in house to make it a home. Regardless of where you currently live or where you hope to live in the future, everyone needs to know something about how their house works and how to keep it functioning properly. The major project of this course is developing a maintenance schedule – essentially an owner’s manual – for your home. If you don’t want to build a schedule for your current home, you can design your own home based on the information you read about home systems and create a manual for that home. This second option allows you to look beyond what exists where you currently live and design a home which makes use of energy efficient design and smart home building practices to create your ideal home. Your assignment then would be to design the owner’s manual for that home. The difficulty will come in actually designing and drawing your own house, but you could also find an existing home design and outfit it with your choice systems. All final projects need to be cleared with your teacher before beginning work.
Advancements in technologies are making today’s homes more and more efficient and automated. Take note of the interesting uses of new technologies being used to make houses more efficient and operate differently than traditional house designs. In the same vein, green technologies are environmentally friendly and make the best use of material, money and energy to create and maintain an efficient house. Utilizing green technology when possible will help the environment and in many cases, save money. The students in this division are considered rural, even if you live in town as opposed to a farm. There are benefits, and drawbacks, to living in a rural setting, but many of them can be addressed or utilized when considering house design and maintenance. It is important that when you are planning for your home maintenance schedule that you factor in the location of your home and the subsequent access to support and resources. The recommended print resource for this course is How Your House Works: A visual guide to understanding and maintaining your home by Charlie Wing.
In The Beginning…
Your house may be the biggest investment you make in your lifetime. It is important to take care of it in order to get the most from your investment. If you are going to start taking care of anything – be it animal, mechanical or human – it is a good idea to understand how it works. Every home has a number of systems which must be understood in order to be able to maintain it. That being said, these systems can vary almost infinitely in their design and operation, so it is important to understand which system you are dealing with.
HVAC (Heating, Ventilation & Air Conditioning)
There isn’t anything much more important to a person in rural Alberta than the HVAC system in their house. True, not everyone has air conditioning, but everyone has heat. Without a functioning heating system there wouldn’t be very many happy people in Alberta.
The most common type of heating system is forced air. A furnace burning gas, oil, coal, wheat, wood pellets, wood, or another heat source uses the heat to warm air. This warmed air is circulated through the house to warm it and keep it warm. A thermostat measures the temperature of the air in a given area and sends instructions to the furnace to either increase the flow of heated air or shut it off. Very important to the forced air system is the cold air return. It takes the cold air from the floor and sends it back to the furnace to be reheated.
Hot water heat can have some different forms. Old type boilers send hot water to giant registers in each room which radiates heat into the surrounding space. New systems pump hot water thorough pipes in the floor to heat a building from the floor up. This is a slow, radiating heat which keeps the floor warm all the time and as the heat from the floor rises, the space is heated. There are also registers along the wall that could have hot water pipes with fins to radiate heat into a room, but these are becoming less and less common.
Electric heat can come from several designs. The most common is by the use of electric radiators along the walls. They are controlled individually and radiate heat without the use of fans. Electric heat can also be used to heat floors by inserting heating wires in the floor to radiate heat much the same way in-floor hot water heating works. Heat can also come from individual units consisting of a heating coil and fan, but there are efficiency and safety concerns with these units.
Wood heat is how the pioneers heated their first homes, and some homes today can make use of the same process to heat their homes. A large wood fired stove or furnace would be centrally located and floor vents to upper levels would help direct heat. Sometimes these furnaces would be in the basement and other times it would be a centrally located fireplace on a main floor. These wood fired units would also be often used for cooking and heating water.
The heat of the sun and the earth can also be utilized in some heating systems. Solar heating uses the sun’s energy to provide heat energy which is used by the house heating system. Passive solar heating uses the raw heat from the sun to physically warm a space, either through passing through the windows or heating panels located outside of a structure. Heat from the earth – called geothermal heat – can also be used to heat houses. A series of pipes run through the earth below the frost line and the warmed fluid passes through a heat pump which transfers the heat to the house in any of several different ways.
There are other technologies being developed which address the heating and cooling of houses, and being able to do so in energy efficient, cost efficient and reliable ways. These include reclaiming heat from waste water and recycled air within a house. These technologies are evolving every day. One of the biggest gains in technology is the control of heating and cooling in a house with the aid of a computer. Controlling heating and cooling based on the time of day, the outside temperature, the level of activity and the preferences of an occupant at any given time can reduce cost and utility utilization rates.
Air filtration is something done in increasingly different ways. Early furnaces didn’t filter the air they pumped through a house. New houses are capable of air filtering systems which create air supplies as clean as those found in hospital operating rooms. Current air filtering technologies are able to remove not only dust from the air, but viruses, microbes and other microscopic particles in the air.
Air conditioning generally refers to the cooling of air during the hottest part of the year. There are several ways in which air can be cooled – not all of which require massive investment or complicated equipment. The simplest air conditioner is a long pipe that is buried below the frost line and air pumped through it. The average temperature of the ground at 2.5m is about 14 degrees Celsius, which is plenty cool for even the hottest days. More common are refrigerant-type units which operate on a heat exchange basis and use your forces air furnace to distribute cool air.
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM
Electricity is common in some form in virtually every house in the world. In some cases it is as simple as 12 volt lighting and in other places it is used to power every system and operate everything from computers to power window shades.
The main point to which all power is attached in a house is the panel. This box is a collection of breakers or fuses which distribute the energy from the feeder line. Breakers are a safety mechanism which instantly cut the power to a given circuit when there is a problem with the power being used. If there is a short circuit – which can cause fires – power is cut off. If there is too much electricity being drawn through a circuit, overheating of the wires can result and a breaker will trip, causing the power flow to stop.
The electrical energy used by a house generally comes from an electrical grid which distributes power created by traditional means, such as hydroelectricity or coal fired generators. Increasingly, there are more power generation sources becoming common in Alberta. Most noticeable is the creation of “wind farms” which have large numbers of turbines, all driven by the prevailing winds. Power from these units goes to a sub-station and the electricity enters the power grid from there. Farms that have their own wind generation units will sell their excess electricity to the power grid. Solar cells are often used in smaller applications due to the high cost of the materials used to make them. Geothermally generated electricity is not common in Canada. It is viable primarily where the earth’s crust is thin and access to the high heat of the earth’s core is easily accessible.
The part of the electrical system which is the most user friendly is the equipment and appliances which use the electrical system. Different appliances and equipment have different demands of the electrical system. Major appliances, such as dryers and stoves, usually require 220 volt power, whereas most other appliances use 110 volt. Energy consumption depends on the appliance, with some being more efficient than others. Canada has the “Energy Star Program” which rates appliances based on their energy efficiency. There are also a variety of programs offered both nationally and provincially which offer financial incentives for home and business owners for increasing their energy efficiency.
Increasing energy efficiency in a house has multiple benefits. The first and most obvious is the financial savings realized in decreased energy bills. Some electrical components, such as light bulbs, can have much longer life spans so replacement is not as frequent. High efficiency furnaces may have a higher initial cost, but savings will be accumulated over time. When a house is retrofitted with high energy efficiency appliances or systems, the savings are not immediately evident, but over time they do add up. The second benefit of increased efficiency lies in the environmental impacts. Decreased reliance on non-renewable fuel sources for electricity generation is a win-win situation.
PLUMBING SYSTEM
There are two sides to the plumbing system: supply and waste. The supply side provides fresh water for drinking, cleaning and operating appliances. The waste side provides a way for waste water to be removed from the house. The only place these two systems actually meet is at the point where the water is used, such as a sink, tub drain or toilet.
Water systems in rural Alberta can vary a great deal from those found in urban locations. Villages generally have a central water supply – similar in many ways to cities – but may make use of a water tower to provide storage and supply. Most farms are on an individualized water system which may make use of a well or cistern for a water supply. In both cases a pressure system is needed to deliver water to its end use. Wells will also often require a filtration or treatment process to make it potable (safe for human consumption).
Water quality can be a significant part of any water system. Every water source has qualities or chemical components which may occur naturally or be added for a variety of reasons. Some people prefer to remove some qualities and in some cases, add to the water’s make up. A very common example would be the use of iron filters to remove excessive iron from a water source. Not removing iron can result in staining of dishes and appliances and in extreme cases, can create taste and smell issues. The size of filtering systems can range from small under-sink or inline cartridge filters to room-filling tank systems with circulating pumps, ultraviolet radiation filtration systems, and carbon filters.
The waste side of the plumbing system is handled differently in rural areas. Those houses which are connected to a sewage collection system have no major concerns once the toilet has been flushed or the bath drain pulled. Truly rural houses will have to rely on different systems to handle waste water. The kind of system that can be used in rural areas is generally dictated by county regulations. There are two common types of waste systems – field and pump out. Both systems begin by collecting waste in a septic tank and pumping the waste water out after it has had a chance to settle. Field systems pump the settled waste water through a series of pipes buried in a large, flat area. These pipes have a large number of holes drilled in them to allow the waste water to seep into the ground and be used by plants for growth. In the pump out system, the waste water is pumped out and allowed to run on the surface, usually on the side of a hill where the water can be used by plants as it runs down the hill. In both systems, solids settle to the bottom of the septic tank and need to be periodically removed by a vacuum truck.
APPLIANCES
Appliances are the system through which people access the services available to their home. These include major appliances in the kitchen and laundry, freezers, water softeners, kitchen sink garbage disposal, and others. Keeping these running at peak efficiency will prolong their life and maximize energy efficiency. It may be difficult to find out information about every appliance in a home, but quite often general guidelines are enough.
The easiest way to approach the appliances in a home is room by room. The kitchen has the most appliances which are very user friendly. Refrigerators can be easily adjusted to optimum temperatures, but those temperatures need to be determined using health recommendations. Modern units are also frost-free, but utilize an evaporation pan. Different models have different requirements. Stoves and ovens use a great deal of energy to operate heating elements and in some cases, replacement elements can save energy. New technologies are much more efficient in creating heat and focusing energy. Dishwashers use energy to heat water as well as to dry dishes. Understanding the settings on a dishwasher will help prolong the life and make efficient use of energy. In-sink garbage disposals use electricity as well as water to function properly. Understanding how these units work and how to keep them operating at their best is important when it comes to longevity and effectiveness. Even counter top appliances should be explored. Some appliances used in place of major appliances – such as grills and crock pots – can cut down on energy consumption and prolong the life of their larger counterparts.
Freezers can be significant energy hogs. Old freezers can use excessive energy because of their size, hardened gaskets and leaky doors. When ice builds up in freezers, energy is used keeping that ice cold as well as the food, so properly maintaining freezers can involve regularly inspecting them and removing ice build up.