Furnace Service: 5 Tips To Keep Your Furnace In Top Shape
Do you want your furnace to function optimally and efficiently? You should take good care of it. Here are tips given by furnace service professionals on how to go about it:
Change the air filter regularly
While it seems as a simple piece, the air filter has a great impact on the proper working of your furnace. The air filter’s role is to determine the quality of air that gets into the house. Due to its location, the air filter tends to accumulate a lot of dirt and debris.
A dirty air filter causes plenty of performance and efficiency issues with the furnace; therefore, you should clean it at least once a month. You can clean it by yourself if you have the skills, but if you have never done it before, let a professional handle it.
Unblock the air registers
It’s not uncommon to find some homeowners placing furniture and other large objects on top of the supply and return registers. You should avoid doing this as it has been shown to lead to airflow issues. It has also been shown to prevent the rooms from heating as well as they are supposed to.
Blocked air registers often lead to the overworking of the furnace. When the unit overworks, it tends to break down fast and you have to keep on replacing it, which as you know is expensive.
For you to keep your furnace in top working condition, you need to get rid of any obstructions that might be near the air registers.
Keep an eye on signs of trouble
Did you know that most furnaces don’t just stop working? Most of them show warning signs that you should be aware of. Some of the most common signs include: loud noises, strange smells, and consuming a lot of energy than they usually do.
Most of the homeowners ignore these problems hoping that they will go away. Unfortunately, they don’t. In fact, they often lead to plenty of other issues that are expensive to fix.
When you notice something wrong with your furnace, regardless of how minor it might be, you should contact a repair professional as soon as possible and ask them to give the unit a look.
Don’t heat an empty room
Many people heat up a house regardless of whether there are people in it or not. This is not only stupid, it also leads to wastage of money. When you have a large house and you want to keep the entire of it hot, you tend to make the furnace work too hard than it should, which reduces its lifespan.
There is no reason why you should heat up a room when there is no one in it. For you to save on energy and also keep your furnace working optimally for long, you should make use of regionalized heating. This is where you only heat up a specific room of the house and leave the other rooms that you aren’t using cold.
If you can afford, you should invest in a portable furnace. At night, when you don’t need a lot of heat, you should consider setting the thermostat low, thus saving some energy.
Don’t wait for too long before replacing the furnace
Regardless of the type of furnace that you have, it will come a time when you will have to replace it. A tell-tale sign that it’s time to replace it is the age of the furnace. Is it more than 10 years? You should highly consider replacing it.
You also should consider replacing it if its constantly developing problems. If you have the phone number of a furnace repair service Falls Church professional on your speed dial, the furnace is failing too many times and its time that you started thinking about replacing it.
When you are buying the new appliance, choose one that is of high quality. Many people make their decision based solely on the price. Don’t do this as you will end up buying the wrong unit.
Avoid a cheap unit as it tends to break down too often. It also won’t heat up your house as well as you would want it to.