Improve the Performance of Your Furnace

Proper maintenance can have a big effect on fuel
bills and should be performed on a routine basis.

• Clean or replace air filters regularly. Don’t know how often to change or clean your filter or if it is supposed be cleaned or changed? Just ask us.

• Maintain proper humidity. If you have a humidifier make sure to follow the operating instructions or it will quickly become ineffective. If you don’t have one, get one. Proper humidity not only protects your body, your house and your belongings. It also saves you money by allowing a lower temperature to feel comfortable.

• Tune up your system. Your heating system should be tuned up and cleaned every year. Regular tune-ups not only cut heating costs, they also increase the lifetime of the system, reduce breakdowns and repair costs, and cut the amount of carbon monoxide and other pollutants pumped into the atmosphere by fossil-fueled systems.
• Clean registers. Warm-air supply and return registers should be kept clean and should not be blocked by furniture, carpets, or drapes.
• (Boiler) Keep baseboards and radiators clean and unrestricted by furniture, carpets, or drapes.

• (Boiler) Bleed trapped air from hot water radiators. Follow prescribed maintenance for steam heat systems, such as maintaining water level, removing sediment, and making sure air vents are working. Check with your heating system technician for specifics on these measures and use caution: a steam boiler produce high-temperature steam under pressure.

• Seal your ducts. In homes heated with warm-air heating, ducts should be inspected and sealed to ensure adequate airflow and eliminate loss of heated air. It is not uncommon for ducts to leak as much as 15-20% of the air passing through them. Leaky ducts can bring additional dust and humidity into living spaces. Thorough duct sealing can cut heating and cooling costs in many homes by 20%.

• Check for wasted energy. If your furnace is improperly sized or if the fan thermostat is improperly set, the fan may operate to long or shorter than it should. If you’re getting a lot of cold air out of the warm-air registers before or after the furnace turns on or off, have our service technician check the fan setting for you.