Heating Maintenance for Your Residential Furnace
Your furnace works hard during the winter, and you need to do your part to keep it running efficiently and to prevent repair issues that are possibly avoidable. The best way for you to accomplish both of these things is to make sure you have a good preventative maintenance schedule you follow and take additional steps to prevent the furnace from overworking. Here is more on this:
Winter-proof the house
One of the most important things you can do before winter is to winter-proof your home. An HVAC technician can come out and help you check your home for things that should be done for winter-proofing. This is going to help the family stay more comfortable all winter and help prevent more workload than what's necessary from being put on the furnace. Some things that are often done when winter-proofing the home include having dual-pane windows installed if there are single-pane currently in place.
Also, you can check the home for drafts and seal up any areas where you find them. A simple way to check is to slowly walk around the house with a lit candle and watch the flame. If it suddenly starts being blown then around, then there is a draft present. You can then use the flame to pinpoint the problem area. Also, replace old weather stripping, put large area rugs on hard floors, and have holes in any of the walls patched.
Replace the dirty filter
It is so important to keep the filter clean and replace it when it gets dirty. This is something most people are aware of, yet it's something many people put off doing longer than they should. A dirty filter not only raises your heating costs unnecessarily, but it is very hard on the furnace. The filter has the very important job of keeping dust and other particles out of the system and removing them from the air. Leaving a filter dirty causes the furnace to fight to draw in air and many of those particles will end up in the system, right where they should not be. The HVAC tech may also change the filter again when they come out if it is dirty at all.
The importance of following a good maintenance schedule
The number one most important thing you will do for your furnace's efficiency and to prolong its lifespan is to follow a good maintenance schedule with the HVAC technician. The technician will likely suggest they come out each year before winter, so they have a chance to service the furnace before you even run it the first time. However, there may be reasons why they would want to come out an additional time, or why they may suggest another timeframe. You want to take their advice, because they know your system and what's going to be best for its upkeep.
To find out more, contact a company like Cool Comfort Services.
Share
