Autumn has fallen

It is here again; Autumn. The season that gives us ever fainter reminders of the summer that was and ever increasing glimpses of the winter that is coming.

But its also that time of the year to get on with preparing your home for winter. If you burn wood then you have left your run a bit late to fill up the wood shed as semi dry wood now is still going to be semi dry in a few months time. So if you’re buying wood, buy the dry stuff, but you will pay for it.

Those with reverse cycle heat pumps, it’s a good time for you to clean the filters on the indoor unit and make sure the outdoor unit is not overgrown with weeds or cluttered with debris. If it was making weird noises or playing up at the the end of last winter, it’s unlikely to have magically repaired itself. This is quite important as the construction and trades areas are booming so there may be a wait before someone can repair or replace a heat pump this year. So don’t delay this kind of service call until winter to make a decision, as I know we are booked out weeks in advance and nearly everyone other electrical business is in the same boat.

Also a good time to replace the batteries in the remote. I reckon we get 20 plus call outs a year for faults that turn out to be just nearly flat batteries in the remote. Daylight savings ends on the 4th of April so that the date we should be putting in our new smoke alarm batteries so you may as well add heating remotes to that list as well.

As the days start getting cooler, our wild furry rodent friends will want to move in. It’s a good time to make sure your outbuildings have baits to thin the herd before they make the next step to your warm house. Rodent damage to electrical cabling is a serious issue and especially those older homes that have old switchboards with no RCD protection.

Speaking of switchboards; these are such a forgotten part of our homes infrastructure. A board of magical little ‘doo-hickey’s’ that live behind a cupboard door or box on the side of the house that we just don’t pay any attention to until the lights don’t come on or something has cooked off and caught fire.

Some of these magical ‘doo-hickeys’ are well past their designed service life or were just never ever designed to have the levels of safety. Simply put, their magic is spent and they’re living on borrowed time. It’s a good idea to call in an electrician or as some people call them ‘magicians’ to get that sorted out. Most switchboard fires or incidents occur during winter when then the electrical circuits are under full load keeping the house warm and lit. The switchboard is the heart of your homes’ electrical system so show it some love.

Make sure the gutters are clean, make sure your drains are clear or any stormwater grates are clear as no one wants to wandering about on a cold winters days trying to get water to go where it is meant to.

Solar systems should be cleaned as we need every drop of the weak winter sun to help offset our heating costs. It’s also a great opportunity to have the system looked over as well, especially the ones that are well over 10 years of age now and this won’t be their first winter.

It’s time to get ready to hunker down, eat way too much comfort food and bask in our warm little cocoons until the days start to stretch out. However, getting prepared now means less disruptions to our winter season or being caught short and ending up cold, wet and miserable or sitting in the dark due to things going awry.

We got a little bit sidetracked last week and we didn’t do our interesting energy fact. I don’t know about you, but when I’m at dinner parties or bbq’s the subject of Photons comes up quite often. And we should all know by now photons are the particles of light from the sun that make solar panels work. 

Those particles of light take anywhere from 100,000 to 50 million years to actually escape the mass of the sun only to take 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel to earth and hit our solar panels. If you’re boiling the kettle and making a coffee with energy collected from your solar system thats from energy older than mankind. If that snippet of information doesn’t change your life, I don’t know what will.

DMS Energy is the North West Coast of Tasmania’s largest and most reliable solar installer of high quality, tried and true products. DMS Energy also specialise in heating, cooling and ventilation, plus lighting and any kind of electrical work you can think of.