Does Landscaping Impact Your HVAC System in Parrish, FL?

Though we can understand your desire to make the area around your Parrish, FL home, as beautiful as possible, we don’t recommend diving into any kind of landscaping work without considering its broader consequences. In particular, your landscaping choices can affect the performance, efficiency and longevity of your HVAC system. Let’s discuss the impact that landscaping can have on your HVAC system in some detail.

Be Careful What You Plant

Think carefully about what you’d like to plant near the outdoor part of your HVAC system. Trees, bushes and other plants can drop leaves, twigs, acorns, and other things into or onto it. Once this sort of debris makes it inside, it can cut off airflow through the system or float around and lodge itself into a valve or other critical component, possibly doing great damage.

Not only will this decrease overall system performance and raise your energy costs, but it’ll also make the system more troublesome to maintain. You may need to hire service technicians to clean debris out of your system and perform tuneups more often. Over time, such things can even have the cumulative effect of cutting short your system’s useful lifespan.

If possible, try to make it so that only evergreen plants grow close to your outdoor HVAC system. Such plants don’t shed their leaves, which significantly decreases the risk that some plant debris may fly into your system. For additional protection, you may also want to use certain kinds of large potted plants as windbreakers.

Space and Access

Many other types of stray objects may fly into your HVAC system by chance, including grass, pebbles and tiny clumps of dirt. If any of these things fall sufficiently close by, a random breeze can pick them up and carry them into your HVAC system as well. The best way to mitigate this risk is to create as much space between the HVAC system itself and the many sources of such rubbish.

At the very barest minimum, there should be 1 foot of lateral space in every direction between your HVAC system and any other plants or objects. Although, it’d be wiser to arrange for 3 or more feet of such space. Also, aim to provide no less than 8-10 feet of vertical space. This implies that you probably shouldn’t have tall trees growing near your HVAC system.

Space is also useful because it makes it easier for HVAC service technicians to access your system whenever they need to conduct repairs, perform a tuneup or outright replace your system. In addition, since lawnmowers scatter bits of grass everywhere, we’d like to warn you to be careful about how and where you mow your lawn. As always, the further away you do this from your system, the fewer risks you’ll take.

Walkways and Gravel Beds

We ask that you consider creating a walkway that leads to your HVAC system and constructing a gravel bed around it. A walkway makes it easier for HVAC service technicians to access your system. Additionally, a gravel bed would provide good separation between your system and any sources of debris or contamination.

If you don’t want to pour concrete through your yard or worry that the pavement might become unpleasantly hot once the weather grows warmer, you can build your path using mulch, bits of wood or other materials. You may also place your HVAC system on a raised platform and surround it with a pool of mulch or woodchips instead of gravel. If you want to do the latter, remember that winds may blow these lighter materials into your system.

If you make the right landscaping decisions, you can avoid a great deal of HVAC-related grief this fall. For help keeping your yard beautiful and your home in Parrish, FL, comfortable, call Custom Air & Plumbing to ask for our HVAC services today.

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