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As we start to move out of the cold winter months and into spring, we tend to think less about our home heaters. Why should we anyway, when it’s starting to warm up?
Even though you may not be using your heater as much as you would in the middle of winter, it is important that you keep it maintained. Otherwise, you could find yourself in a tricky situation if it fails when you need it when a cold spell arrives.
When it comes to heating maintenance, several different processes can help reduce heating problems you face over the winter, as well as in other seasons of the year. But, unfortunately, many people think that heating maintenance doesn’t benefit them at all or that they don’t need it.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s how heating maintenance in Delaware benefited you this winter!
Natural gas furnaces are the most common type of home heating system in our area, but not all homes have access to natural gas. For all-electric homes, the most popular option for central heating is an electric furnace. These furnaces are safer than gas-burning appliances and they can also last for five years long on average. They also need fewer repairs in general because they have a simpler design and don’t suffer from the strain of combusting gas.
But a gas furnace can still malfunction, and this winter you might need the help of our professionals for furnace repair in Dover. We’ve put together a list of several reasons for your electric furnace to quit working. Some won’t require a professional repair, only an adjustment. Anything more complex, however, needs trained experts.
Any powered mechanical device can potentially overheat. A furnace, a powerful device designed to generate heat, is especially susceptible to overheating. You’ll know that your home’s furnace is overheating if it keeps shutting down early and you notice a burning odor coming from the vents. You may also notice a humming sound coming from the furnace, which indicates a motor that’s overworking.
The first thing you need to know in this situation is that the furnace is acting the way it should in case of overheating: it’s shutting off. Gas furnaces are designed with safety features that will shut the system down when overheating occurs. The furnace’s limit switch detects a temperature that’s too high and turns off the heating cycle.
You still need to have furnace repair in Milford to fix the furnace—you absolutely don’t want to risk any potential furnace dangers, and continuing to run the furnace puts it at risk of burnt-out motors and even more expensive repairs.
You may not have turned your furnace on yet for the season, but the time is approaching rapidly. We recommend you have regular maintenance for your furnace before the first true winter weather day, since this is the best help you can give to your heating system to make it through the season without trouble.
It’s furnace trouble that we’re here to talk about today, because one of the most common complaints the people who call us for furnace repair in Dover have is that their furnace cannot compete against the cold the way it used to. Instead, it’s leaving the house or certain rooms too chilly, and people are cranking up the thermostat to try to get more heat.
Calling us to investigate is the right step. You don’t want to open up the furnace yourself and tinker inside it—it’s potentially dangerous. We can help you better understand what might be happening by looking at several reasons why your furnace is falling behind on its job.
Considering how cold it gets here in the winter, taking the proper steps to maintain your home heating in Delaware is a vital fall job. And the most important part of maintenance is arranging for HVAC professionals to give your heater a thorough inspection and tune-up. This professional heating maintenance is the best thing you can have done for your home comfort, both for the immediate and long-term future.
At Atlantic Refrigeration & Air Conditioning, Inc., we have a Maintenance Agreement Club to make this job easy for you. When you sign up, you’ll enjoy special membership perks along with the general benefits of keeping up with fall maintenance. To help convince you, we’ve listed the top six reasons to have heating maintenance scheduled this month.
The thermostat for a house seems like a simple enough device. When you want the house to be warmer, you raise it. When you want it cooler, you lower it. And, in many ways, the thermostat is that basic: even with the complex “smart” thermostats available today, a thermostat still operates as a switch that turns the heater, AC, and air handler on and off as needed.
But people often mistake the thermostat as a tool to overcome a deficiency in their HVAC system. For example: let’s say you’re finding it hard to keep your house warm during the winter, so you keep pushing up the thermostat higher until you get the comfort you want.
This isn’t how either the thermostat or the heater should work. Both are designed so you can set the thermostat to a single, steady temperature and receive the comfort you desire. If you need to push the thermostat higher than normal, it means you have a problem with your heating in Dover, DE.
It’s easy for people like us who work in HVAC and are immersed in it every day to forget that most homeowners aren’t familiar with the terms of heating and air conditioning systems in the same way we are.
One example is the air handler. It can trigger confusion for people who hear “air,” then immediately guess the air handler means the air conditioning system. An air handler is important for an AC, but it does more. We often have to make repairs to air handlers to help with customers’ heating in Delaware. If you have a central furnace heating your house, whether electric or natural gas-powered, an air handler may be a part of how the furnace works.
Yes, this sounds alarming. You don’t want to see smoke coming off of any mechanical appliance for your home (well, except for a barbecue). It usually indicates a fire has started in the machine, and that’s a serious emergency.
So if you looked out the window on a cold day while your heat pump was running and saw big clouds of smoke billowing off it, we wouldn’t blame you for getting panicked and wondering who you need to call to get something done about it. You may be even thinking about calling the fire department.
Well, we’re glad we caught you in time. Although we can’t 100% guarantee that your heat pump hasn’t caught fire and is belching out smoke, we think we can say with about 99% certainty that what’s happening is normal and not harmful.
You don’t want to have a dead furnace in a Maryland winter—that’s something you’ll know if you’ve spent even one cold day here. If you’ve had your current furnaces for over ten years, it is beginning to move into the territory where it could fail on you. Keeping up with routine maintenance each spring will make this less likely, but as the furnace continues to age, it will eventually reach a point where it won’t go on any further and repairs will be too costly to keep it running.
Fortunately, furnaces rarely burn their last without giving out several warnings of their imminent demise. If you pay attention to the furnace’s operation, you can catch some of these omens of a dying furnace and call for HVAC technicians in time. Our team of experts can tell if the furnace can be rescued with repairs or if a replacement is better. Below are five of the major signs to call us for assistance:
Furnaces make some noise when they run, but the sound of the burners and the fans isn’t distracting and you’re used to it as part of the sound of winter. But if your furnace starts to make more of a racket, one that has you occasionally looking up and thinking, “What was that?”, then something is probably wrong. These noises can include rattling, clicking, booming, and grinding. If it sounds off, have it looked into.
The furnace is running, hot air is flowing out of the room vents, and it would seem as if everything is okay. Except some rooms are not as warm as they usually are. If you can’t find a reason for this in the rooms themselves (such as cracks around windows or other drafts), then the furnace is probably losing its heating capacity—and it will continue to get worse until the furnace runs itself down.
This is when the furnace gets caught in a start-stop pattern that repeats multiple times over an hour. A furnace should run in heating cycles of at least 15 minutes before cycling down. Short-cycling can indicate several different problems, or possible multiple ones coming together if you have an older furnace.
A furnace, if maintained annually, should keep around 95% of its original energy efficiency up to the last two years of its service life. When you see that you are paying much more to run the furnace than you ever have before, it probably means the furnace is now in those final years. Repairs may only stall this: a technician can help determine if repairs are worthwhile.
Have you found yourself pushing your thermostat settings up higher and higher in order to warm up the house? You shouldn’t need to do this—the same steady temperature you normally set the furnace to should be fine, unless the furnace is starting to fail.
At Atlantic Refrigeration & Air Conditioning, Inc., “We Take Pride in Your Comfort.” Schedule service for your furnace—repair or replacement—with our team today.
