Early Fall in Kansas City: An HVAC Plan for the In-Between Season

It is the strangest stretch of the year in Kansas City. You leave the house at 7 a.m. needing a jacket, shed it by midmorning, and by afternoon the air conditioning is running again. Fall keeps threatening to arrive, then changing its mind.

For building managers, this in-between season can be one of the trickiest times of year. A building may need heat in the morning and cooling just a few hours later, and this year that back-and-forth seems to be hanging around longer than usual.

The good news is that the shoulder season rewards a little planning. Here is how we would approach it before the weather finally commits to cold.

Resist the urge to flip to heat too early

When the mornings turn cool, the temptation is to switch the whole building over to heating. Then the afternoon warms up, someone is uncomfortable, and the system spends the day fighting itself, cooling one hour and heating the next. That back and forth wastes energy and puts needless wear on the equipment. A well set thermostat with an automatic changeover and a sensible dead band handles the day to night swing far better than a manual flip ever will. If your setup cannot do that cleanly, this is the season it shows.

This is the best window all year for maintenance

The stretch between cooling and heating is the calm before the storm, and it is the smartest time to get a technician out. Your cooling equipment has just finished a long season and could use a once over, and your heating side has been sitting idle for months and has not been asked to prove it works yet. Handling both in one preventative maintenance visit now beats discovering a dead heater on the first genuinely cold morning. It is also simply easier to get on the schedule before everyone else remembers their furnace at the same time.

If you want the bigger picture on what your commercial HVAC system is doing through a changeover like this, that is a good place to start.

Do not forget the air inside while you close the building up

As the weather cools, buildings get sealed up. Windows stay shut, fresh air trades off for recirculated air, and whatever is floating around inside stays inside longer. That is why the shoulder season is a good moment to think about indoor air quality for your employees. Clean filters and a system that actually moves and exchanges air make a real difference in how a closed up building feels through the fall and winter.

Get ready for the real switch to heat

The flip in Kansas City tends to come all at once. When it does, you want the heating side ready rather than untested. Our guide to preparing your system for colder temperatures walks through what that looks like, and if your building runs on split systems, there are a few specifics worth knowing before the first cold snap.

Weird weather is easier to handle when someone has already looked at your equipment. We answer the phone every day of the year, so call us and we will help you get the building set for whatever the calendar decides to do next.

Founded in 2004, DMC Service, Inc. is proud of our decades of service to the Kansas City Metro and beyond. Based out of Olathe, we are a 100% woman-owned business with Karen Crnkovich at the helm as President and "Chief Hand-Shaker." Karen leads the DMC Service team with unwavering passion and enthusiasm to fulfill our purpose: to keep people comfortable, safe and healthy.