For some people, there’s no better sign that summer’s coming than when it’s time to put in their window air conditioners. Yes, there’s nothing like the timeless ritual of dusting off and cleaning a few big, clunky machines, dragging them around the house and finagling them into windows — and hoping they don’t fall out.

After that, there’s nothing to do but sit back, listen to them roar incessantly and watch your electric bills soar for a few months. If you’re lucky, you may even get a sore throat for a day or two as the dust inside the machines kick into the air. What could be better? Well, a lot was going to get better for one homeowner in Ocean City.

Problem: Homeowner was using window unit air conditioners and baseboard heat and had huge energy bills. They wanted something more efficient and affordable, without sacrificing comfort.

Solution: Install a new Carrier Infinity two-stage heating system, Comfort Series 85% AFUE gas furnace and a custom-designed four-panel heat-pump system.

After years of cooling down his house with a few window units each summer, this homeowner was ready for a change. He wanted to lower his energy bills, and was interested in ductless panels for his home. Thanks to Comfort Now By Bob McAllister, his new system gives him lower energy bills year-round, and a zero-interest payment plan to help with the price tag.

To start, a Comfort Now Specialist went through a few options with the homeowner. Since the main goal was to lower energy bills, why just restrict those savings to the summer months? The home’s furnace was already 20 years old, which meant it probably wasn’t working as well as it could. Plus, many energy-efficient models hit the market over the past two decades.

The homeowner replaced his old furnace with a Carrier Infinity two-stage heating system and an 85-percent AFUE gas furnace. The AFUE is Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency, and basically measures how much of the gas burned by the furnace actually heats your home.

In this case, just 15 percent of the gas burned goes toward exhaust. That’s a slightly better figure than the average for natural gas furnaces, which is 78 to 84 percent.

Jargon aside, this means lower energy bills in the winter for starters. Although a gas furnace costs more upfront, it heats a home for significantly less money every month than electric heat. Gas heat also warms a room faster, and these Carrier models are specifically designed to heat an entire home evenly.

With that in place, the only thing left was to make sure the house stayed cooler for less money each year. That’s where the ductless panel system came in.

The ductless panels can be mounted virtually anywhere on a wall. Usually, they sit up high, where heat gets trapped. Each one heats or cools independently, to get an even temperature across the house with less work. In this case, Comfort Now created a custom design just for this house. The panels, their sizes and locations were carefully selected to be most efficient and unobtrusive for this Ocean City home.

The panels force air through very small tubes, making installation is easy and subtle. All a technician needs to do is drill small, three-inch holes and mount the equipment. That’s a lot nicer than losing entire windows to old air conditioners, and they never have to be moved.

Now this Ocean City homeowner is all set with a great, efficient heating and cooling system and lower energy bills in both the summer and winter. And, he did it without breaking the bank thanks to Comfort Now’s “Whole House Upgrade” program.

Thanks to South Jersey Gas and the New Jersey Clean Energy Program, homeowners like this one in Ocean City qualified for up to $10,000 interest-free for upgrading to energy-efficient HVAC equipment. He could also receive a $700 rebate for converting from electric heat. With this in mind, Comfort Now helped the homeowner through the application process. Of course, he didn’t need the whole 10 grand, but still qualified.

Now, he’s now paying installments over 18 months with zero interest. At that rate, his monthly energy expense while on the payment plan is still cheaper on average than what he paid for his old system.

And, he doesn’t have to drag the air conditioners out of the garage every year.