When you turn on the air conditioner in your Hampton Roads home, it can't adjust its cooling to the amount you really need. Instead, what happens is that it will cool your home with all it's got until your home is slightly overcooled. Then, the system will shut off until your home goes back to slightly over-warm. This inelegant solution can lead to temperature swings and inconsistent noise coming through your ductwork. However, there is a better way of cooling: a two-stage cooling system. With two-stage cooling, your A/C compressor has both a high and a low setting, rather than simply on and off. This means that it can more closely approximate the amount of cooling your home actually needs. You can further refine the cooling by looking for a two-stage air conditioner which incorporates a variable-speed fan: typically, the fan also has only an "on" and "off" setting, whereas a variable-speed fan allows your HVAC system to deliver just the amount of airflow your house needs. But the benefits of two-stage cooling go beyond noise reduction and temperature stabilization. With a two-stage compressor and a variable-speed fan, air is circulated more continuously through your home. This, in turn, means that air is continually being drawn through your HVAC air filter, as well as any humidifier, dehumidifier, or air cleaner you've installed. In this way, you can actually see benefits to your indoor air quality. During the winter, you can enjoy the same benefits by installing a two-stage furnace as well. The principle behind a two-stage furnace is the same: a high setting and a low setting allow you home to use the energy-saving low setting during the milder times, while the system can still kick into high gear when the temperature drops too low. If you'd like to learn more about how to-stage cooling and heating can work for you, don't hesitate to call us at Russell's Heating & Cooling! Our goal is to help educate our customers in Chesapeake, Virginia and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about two-stage cooling and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 757-750-1831. Credit/Copyright Attribution: “geralt/Pixabay”