I personally can’t believe I’m saying this but summertime is almost here. With that comes vacations or the increasingly popular “Staycations”. For myself I get to see a good friend from college get married as my vacation this year. It will be the first time my wife and I have left our daughter for more than just one night. With the vacation of course came a good amount of planning, both at home and at work.
At home we got lucky because our parents are going to take turns watching our daughter, house, and dogs. (Can’t beat free baby/house/dog sitting.) They’ll of course be eating it up because they get to spend so much time with their grand-daughter and getting to completely spoil her for several days. For most people when they go on vacation they have to prepare the house for no one to be there during their vacation. A few points we make sure to cover in the case no one will be home is to turn off the water at the main shut off, set the thermostat for around 80° F so the A/C isn’t running that much, get rid of as much food from the fridge as possible so there isn’t a loss in the case of a power outage. We also stop the mail and the paper, and lastly we set a few lights to turn on and off so it still appears someone is home, this can be done through timers or trusted neighbors, which is what we use. This makes sure that you aren’t wasting energy while you are gone and when you come back home everything is ready to go back to normal or in our case as close to normal it can get.
At work I have a similar checklist. Make sure all my emails are taken care of that need to be, ensure the e-mail and voicemail messages are set correctly, clean the desk up, and make sure to log out of the computer so there is a lower risk of shenanigans involving my background image or desktop icons. This makes sure than when I get back to the office I’m not spending time and energy trying to get to the point of caught up and working on new projects.
Preparing to leave for vacation is something you can very easily translate into how to prepare your compressed air system before you leave for a few days or even before you go home for the night. You probably shut your compressor down so you can save money on your energy bill, the problem is if you don’t have a well maintained system you won’t have that stored air available when you come back. If your system has leaks or if you are leaving a blow off on continuously even when the process is not needed then when you come in the next day or after a few days away the air isn’t there and you have to wait for the compressor to build up an initial charge to even begin work. This not only causes additional work load on your compressor but it is down time that is easily avoidable. With the help of our Six Steps to Compressed Air Optimization you can make sure you still have air in the storage tank when you get in on Monday rather than having to wait for the compressor.
So whether you are going on a vacation or just leaving for the day make sure you are doing everything you can to conserve, turn off those lights, seal up the leaks, and it will make the next time you come in that much easier. Not to mention the savings you will see.
Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_BF
