Keeping Your St. Louis AC Running During Extreme Heat
A heat dome traps hot air over a region for days or even weeks at a time. When one settles over the St. Louis metro area, temperatures can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, the nighttime lows bring no relief. Your AC system runs almost nonstop under those conditions, and that demand pushes it closer to its limits every minute. Knowing how to manage your system during extreme heat can prevent a breakdown when you need cooling the most. Why a Heat Dome Pushes Your AC to Its Limits Most residential AC systems size for a design temperature around 95 degrees. Engineers use that benchmark because it covers the vast majority of summer days in the region. When outdoor temperatures stay above 100, your system loses the ability to keep up. The gap between indoor and outdoor temperatures grows wider than the system can bridge. High overnight temperatures during a heat dome add extra strain to your AC. Cooler nights give the unit a lighter workload and a chance to rest between cycles. When the lows stay above 80, the system runs more often through the night to hold your set temperature. That increased runtime adds wear to the compressor, fan...
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