Proudly Serving Hamilton, OH Since 1973
It gets chilly, you turn your heater on, but something isn’t right. It’s not heating your house the way it normally does, or maybe it sounds different. Your concern is valid: something could be extremely wrong with your heater.
Heating repair in Middletown may be the solution, but before we jump into that, let’s find out if your heater problems sound like anything on this list.
The modern gas furnace is built to work as safely as possible. The combustion of natural gas can create dangers from toxic gases like carbon monoxide and from flames escaping from the combustion chamber. But when furnaces are well-maintained, they rarely cause problems for homes. If they did, they wouldn’t be permitted in residential buildings in the first place.
The furnace that warms your house during the winter has several safety mechanisms built into it, such as the flame rollout switch and the flame sensor. One of the key safety components is the furnace limit switch, and we’re going to look at this vital part of your furnace today.
The most common nugget of wisdom we impart to our customers to help them help their furnaces is to regularly change the furnace filter. This filter is usually located on the HVAC cabinet at the point where the return air ducts connect to where the blower is located. The filter does the job of blocking debris coming through the return air ducts so it won’t enter the cabinet and contaminant the furnace, blower, and other parts of the HVAC system. This filter isn’t self-cleaning, and after one to three months the congestion in the filter will start to cause problems and even lead to damage to the furnace.
We want you to have a healthy and reliable furnace. We’re always ready to assist with heating repair in Cincinnati, OH when you need it, but we know you’d much rather not have to call us in the first place. Regularly changing the furnace filter goes a long way toward preventing needless furnace problems. To help you better grasp why changing the filter is so important, we’ll list how a clogged filter can damage a furnace.
We want to start this blog with an assurance: gas furnaces are not inherently dangerous appliances. They’re found in millions of homes across the country, dutifully keeping families warm. Provided they receive regular maintenance and professional repairs as necessary, they can run at high degrees of safety throughout their service lives.
Still, burning natural gas does carry risks, such as exposure to toxic gases like carbon monoxide and the hazard of explosions and fires. We’re going to examine some of the ways your gas furnace may develop safety problems to help you better understand how to prevent them. Our technicians are ready to assist you whenever you need furnace repair in Mason, OH, or if you need to replace an older furnace that’s no longer safe.
The simple answer to this question is no. Repairing a furnace requires special training and equipment only available to licensed professionals. Attempting to tamper with a furnace without the proper tools and knowledge can damage the furnace and create serious safety hazards.
This doesn’t mean you’re without options if you have a faulty furnace! There’s a difference between a professional furnace repair in West Chester, OH and going through troubleshooting steps. In fact, we encourage you to try troubleshooting your furnace before giving us a call for repairs. You may find out a simple solution to the problem. Just don’t do anything requiring opening up the furnace and using tools on it!
Let’s go through the basic steps of troubleshooting a faulty furnace.
You never want to start the cold weather months with a furnace that doesn’t seem up to the job. You want to know that after you turn the furnace on for the season and make the adjustment to the thermostat that you’ll receive the right amount of warmth for your family’s comfort. If your furnace isn’t keeping up the cold, there may be something wrong. It might be minor. Or it might be something that will require you to call us for furnace repair in Cincinnati, OH or even a full furnace replacement.
To help you get started, we’re going to look at several of the reasons a furnace might get into the problem your furnace is currently in. Please don’t attempt any actual repair yourself, however, unless it’s something simple (we’ll point those out below).
Time to get ready for winter! We’re already experiencing days dipping down into the ‘40s, and that means your home’s furnace may have already turned on. We recommend you schedule regular maintenance for it if you haven’t already—and we’re the local Mason, OH, HVAC contractor for the job. This maintenance is the best way to prevent your furnace from suddenly stopping during the winter.
Maintenance can’t be 100% effective at preventing problems, however, and you may come across a point this coming season when your furnace stops providing you with heat. You might need to call us to repair the furnace, but below we’ll go over some basic troubleshooting steps to see if there’s a simple reason for the problem.
This post is going to be a bit of deflection, because the answer to the question is a simple one: Yes, your furnace works harder on colder days. It doesn’t work differently when it’s colder—the same principles of how the furnace heats and distributes air are at work. What makes the furnace work harder in cold weather is that it must run for longer to raise the interior temperature of your house to the target you need for comfort.
Now here’s where we deflect, because talking about your furnace working longer during cold weather needs some examination. The, ahem, cold fact we’re looking at is that you are probably making your furnace work harder than necessary on those cold days. This leads to higher energy bills, but it can also lead to a furnace that fails abruptly in the middle of one of the coldest days of the year. Knowing more about your furnace running on cold days can help you avoid emergency heating repair in Cincinnati, OH.
When your furnace turns on to warm up your house, you expect it to run long enough to deliver an even distribution of heat throughout the rooms. If it starts to shut down early, the house will have cold spots. When a furnace behaves this way, it’s called short-cycling, and it’s a common problem we see in residential furnaces. In some cases, there’s a simple solution to short-cycling. Other times, you’ll need to call us for furnace repair in Mason, OH. When in doubt, always err on the safer side when it comes to a furnace and rely on professionals.
Below are some of the possible sources of a furnace quitting before it gets the job done:
March doesn’t mean we’re through with cold weather. But it’s when winter officially ends and we start the build toward summer. Now is a good time to think about how your heater performed during the winter so you’ll have an idea if you need to make any updates, repairs, or even a full replacement for it during the spring or summer.
We’ll go with a grading system you’re familiar with—school report card grades! Consider how well your heater worked over the past winter. Take into account your comfort, how often you needed to run the heater, if it required any repairs, its age, and your sense of its reliability. Give it a grade from “A” to “F” and look at our handy guide below:
