Inland Heat: Keeping Up in Escondido and San Marcos

Use the swing to your advantage

Inland nights cool off substantially. Pre-cooling the house in the cooler part of the day and easing the setpoint through the hottest hours moves load off the peak, which helps both comfort and cost under time-of-use billing. This works far better inland than on the coast, because the overnight temperature drop is bigger.

Where inland systems actually lose

• A condenser coil packed with dust, which is the inland equivalent of the coast's salt film
• Attic ductwork leaking conditioned air into a space that may be well over 130°F on a summer afternoon
• Insufficient return air, so the system cannot move the volume it needs on the hottest days
• Undersized equipment chosen from a coastal rule of thumb

The attic is the biggest lever

Most inland homes here run their ducts through the attic. Every leak in that duct system dumps cooling into the hottest space in the building, and every foot of poorly insulated duct gains heat on the way to a room. Sealing and insulating that ductwork often does more for an inland house than new equipment would.

Before the first heat wave

Get the condenser cleaned and the charge verified before the season rather than during it. That is what the $88 tune-up is for, and the Cool Club at $225 a year adds priority scheduling for exactly the week when everyone calls at once.