Now that fall is here and winter is approaching, your furnace is going to enter a period of increasingly intense activity. That means that Shorter, AL, residents are bound to be especially interested in keeping their furnaces running as well and for as long as possible. Here are some ways to help extend your furnace lifespan so it can keep chugging away for longer:
Schedule Regular Maintenance
First and foremost, don’t lose sight of the importance of professional maintenance. Without it, you may not catch minor issues early, which gives them time to become larger problems that are harder and more costly to fix later. A lack of maintenance can increase how frequently your furnace needs maintenance.
Catching any problems early can keep your furnace running optimally, saving you not just on repair costs but also on your energy bills. Industry professionals recommend scheduling maintenance at least once annually, though biannual maintenance could also be a great idea.
Don’t Put Off Necessary Furnace Repairs
When your furnace needs repairs, it can give off many different signs. It might refuse to turn either on or off, or it might start giving off strange noises or awful smells. Your heating bills might spike for no clear reason, water might begin leaking from your system, your house might suddenly become quite dusty or the unit might heat the various parts of your home quite unevenly, among other signs.
While preventive maintenance can help you avoid some of these, your furnace might still need repairs at some point. The point is that if you notice anything like the above, call for repairs as soon as you can. Putting this off will only damage your system further and may eventually create problems that will not be possible to fix at all.
Invest in a Programmable Thermostat
Programmable thermostats are extremely convenient since they control precisely when, where and for how long your furnace will operate. Once you set the schedule, you don’t have to worry as much about turning your system on or off unless there’s a sudden temperature difference (like a winter storm or unusually warm period).
By scheduling things instead of relying on doing it manually, you can minimize the amount of energy used to heat your home, putting your system under less stress. As a result, parts will last longer, and you may even save on your energy bills.
Try to Keep Temperatures Consistent
To continue on the subject of thermostats, one important habit to learn is to not change temperatures around wildly. Huge swings in your thermostat’s settings will force your furnace to consume more energy than would be necessary if it simply operated at an even keel.
To really increase efficiency and stretch out furnace life, try to find the lowest temperature setting you’re comfortable with and stick with it. You may have to play around and experiment a little bit to find this setting, but once you do so, programmable thermostats will make adhering to habits like this one much easier.
Change Your Filters
Your furnace filters should remove pollutants from the air that travels through the system. Eventually, however, these pollutants will gather on the mesh of each filter and may thereby restrict airflow, which makes the system work harder to make up for the air it doesn’t pull in, increasing the wear and tear on your furnace. Generally speaking, you should check your filters monthly and change them out when you can’t see through them, around every 60-90 days.
There aren’t many things more annoying and inconvenient than having your furnace completely break down in the middle of the cold season in Shorter, AL. To make sure that doesn’t happen, just call Air Conditioning by Luquire and have our skilled team of heating repair service technicians fix your furnace.
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