Fall Furnace Checklist To Help With Repair Service

As the leaves turn color and people start pulling out their favorite comfy sweaters and socks, the last thing on your mind may be your furnace system. We get it. As the fall chill soon becomes bone-piercing cold, most Batavia homeowners are worried about the next flavor of hot chocolate they will buy, not the status of their HVAC system. Here’s the thing though, if you’d seen as many furnace failures as we have, you’d be raising the voice of warning too. Here are a few tips for furnace maintenance to get you ready for the chilling winter months. 

Furnace Repair Service In Batavia

Before the snow and ice blow in (thank you, Great Lakes), use these steps to avoid a costly furnace repair service:

• Clear the area around your furnace of dust, debris, and clutter. Over the summer months, toys, neglected papers, and other random items can get put too close to your furnace, which becomes an issue during the cold winter months. Items that are too close to a gas furnace can present a fire hazard. Check with the manufacturer to find out their clearance-to-combustible requirement (aka how far away to keep combustible items), but just keeping the furnace clear of anything flammable will be a major help. That goes for a gas water heater, too. A quick clean-up and sweep around both the furnace and water heater can go a long way in maintaining a functioning system to avoid a furnace repair service. 
• Check the furnace venting. The venting unit is usually on the side of the furnace. A good rule of thumb is to keep flammable items at least 6 inches away from metal venting. 
• Vacuum around the area regularly and scrub the furnace every year. For some reason, it never crosses our minds to actually clean our HVAC systems. Usually we rely on malfunctions to give us warning signs. However, a proactive approach can greatly reduce the amount paid in furnace repairs over the years. 
• Change or clean the filter regularly. As the seasons change, purchase a new filter to start the season right. Don’t skimp on a cheap filter. A high quality filter lasts longer and traps more kinds of particles. Afterward, be sure to check the filter at least monthly throughout the heating season and replace and clean it as soon as it shows dirt and dust. Maintaining a clean filter in your unit is the simplest method to keep your system running efficiently, even in the furnace-wrecking winter months. 
• If you have a condensing furnace, clean the condensate drain.

Overall, this process can take as little as 10 minutes. A quick 10-minute sweep of the area and check of the filters can get your system completely ready for a cold winter. If during your inspections you find excess debris buildup, or if your furnace isn’t as efficient as it has been in the past, October is a great time to begin a furnace repair service project. Since many homeowners haven’t turned on the heat yet, there is a lot of unknowns as to if the furnace system will work properly when turned on. (You know that smell when the heater hasn’t been turned on in six months? Yeah, we like to avoid that.) Call the furnace repair service experts at All Seasons Heating & Cooling for furnace inspections and service repairs in Batavia. They’re complex machines, and we are experts at setting them right.