Finding the proper HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system for your home or business in Blue Diamond, Nevada, starts with understanding your climate. "Desert" doesn't do justice to our arid, high-desert environment that teeters between the Mojave and Great Basin deserts. We have blistering summers, airy, gentle winds, and relatively warm winters (despite a few exceptions in the last couple of years, during which we had snow). Your forced-air system must work harder to cool your living and working spaces during the height of summer. Forced-air furnaces must be powerful enough to get the job done. The furnace under consideration for this section is a 90 percent four-module unit; it's powerful, energy-efficient, and reliable. How forced air interacts with space and ducts makes the difference between comfort and misery in the depths of summer and the depths of winter.
The efficiency of the HVAC system you install in your Blue Diamond home directly affects your energy costs, so it's best to become familiar with the different types of cooling and heating systems available before making a decision. For example, all heat pumps, which are quite effective in the Blue Diamond climate, work on the same principle: They pull heat from the inside of your home and reject it to the outside when you're trying to cool your space. They also pull heat from the outside and bring it in when you're trying to warm your space. And all kinds of heat pumps work efficiently, as is evidenced by the SEER ratings. Still, the safest bet for efficiency is a geothermal heat pump, which has a much lower running cost than an air-source heat pump, another kind of heat pump that will drop your energy bill significantly compared to traditional heating and cooling systems.
For the residents of Blue Diamond, equal weight must be given not just to the installation but also to the maintenance of your HVAC system. The personnel responsible for installing the system and those who subsequently maintain it must be certified technicians and must understand the environment of Blue Diamond. The installation, of course, is the most critical part. If not done right, everything else done subsequently to attempt to make the system work efficiently will amount to little. These technicians must also be up-to-date with the latest in industry standards because what's been "normal" has changed dramatically even in just the last few years. The opposite of installation is de-installation. Systems need to be maintained. If they are not, they will fail and the residents of Blue Diamond will be just like folks in the southern United States when confronted with the summer sun: sweltering.