With a little bit of care and knowledge, you can check your heating maintenance system and keep it running smoothly. You don’t need to be a professional to take care of the little things. Heating systems should last between 10 to 30 years. Typically, after 10 years, your factory warranty runs out, making repairs more costly to fix. This is why it’s so important to Maintain Your Heating System throughout the year.
Heating Maintenance Tips
Remove debris and snow from outdoor units
Every heat pump has a unit that is kept outdoors. As the temperature begins getting low and leaves begin to fall, they can get lodged in your outdoor unit’s fan. Moreover, snow can get accumulated on your heat pump’s outdoor unit during heavy winter storms. Be sure to take out time to remove dust, debris, and snow that starts building up on your heat pump’s outdoor unit, especially during this transitional season.
Keep Your Outside Unit Clean
When you’re doing home heating system maintenance, don’t forget the outside unit.
In the fall, keep an eye on leaves that might be blocking the unit’s fan. Remove leaves and other debris from around the fan to make sure it works properly. In the winter, remove accumulated snow from the outdoor unit.
Test your CO detectors
CO detectors will warn you if your furnace develops a carbon monoxide leak, which could potentially be life-threatening to the people in your home. Make sure that your CO detectors are working and that they have a fresh set of batteries during the heating season.
Don’t Overwork The System
An effective way to keep a heating system working well is to reduce the amount of heating and cooling it has to do. Check your home for leaky windows and doors. You want to make sure that cold or hot air isn’t entering the house as much as possible.
The more outside air getting in the more the furnace will have to run. This will put undue pressure on the heating system. Your system will have a shorter lifespan and will develop more serious problems as a result.
Inspect your home. Check the window edges and door frames. You can hold a candle near the window frames to see if any air is getting in.
What Happens If You Don’t Keep up with Regular Heating System Maintenance?
If you don’t perform maintenance on your furnace or heating system, you may have some problems further down the line, and they can be expensive. The first thing you’ll notice is higher utility bills. When your furnace isn’t maintained, it loses efficiency over time. This means your home’s rooms won’t get as warm, but your furnace still uses the same amount of energy if not more to try to heat them. Because you’re still using energy, you’ll notice an increase in your gas and electricity bills right away.
