Checking your furnace before the start of a new season should be a top priority for any household. Comes the winter, keeping the place warm will become the most important thing about running a household. How warm your home can get depends on two things – the insulation and the heating system. Speaking of the latter, the furnace is the key component of your heating system, responsible for the maximum temperature in your household. This is also an urgent matter that needs to be resolved within several months (sometimes even weeks). With that in mind and without further ado, here’s how to check your furnace before the start of a new season.
Test the thermostat
The first thing you need to do in order to ensure the functionality of your furnace is to check the thermostat. First, make sure that it’s in on position. Next, stand at the thermostat for a bit while someone else stands at the furnace. Then, raise the heat setting slowly. If the furnace is not making a sound, this means that the thermostat is not sending a signal. In that scenario, it should be replaced as soon as possible. In the case where you want to turn off the breaker, you need to keep in mind that there’s no risk of electrocution since the thermostat operates on a low voltage.
Contact professionals
The thing you need to keep in mind is that sometimes you can’t handle the maintenance of your furnace on your own. For instance, if you have a gas furnace, the installation and surrounding pipelines are incredibly delicate. Messing them up may pose a substantial hazard to everyone in your home. So, the safest course of action would be to find reliable plumbing services that also have a certificate in gas-fitting. This way, you get the highest guarantee that the job will be done to everyone’s satisfaction, that the furnace will do as it’s supposed to and that your household and its inhabitants are safe.
Airflow and surroundings
The furnace itself isn’t all that you need to worry about. You see, it’s not that hard to imagine a spark flying from your furnace in order to cause a blazing inferno when in touch with combustible material. This is why the immediate surroundings need to be cleared. If your furnace is indoors, make sure not to store items around it. If it’s outside, you may have to do some landscaping. Shrubs and other plants are both a fire hazard and obstruct the airflow. When it comes to combustion, airflow is pivotal.
Check carbon monoxide detector
The very purpose of the furnace is to combust fossil fuels in order to generate heat. Now, where there’s combustion (in any form), there’s also the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. This is why you need to make sure that your carbon monoxide detector is up to the task. First, check its batteries or even replace them. This is not an expensive investment, especially considering the fact that you can use it in order to buy yourself peace of mind. Checking your carbon monoxide detector is something that should be done once per month.
In conclusion
The last thing you need to keep in mind is that it’s not just about your furnace. In order to keep your home warm, you also need to ensure that the loss of heat isn’t that bad, which is why you need to check if there are any weak points in your wall. So, what you need to do is invest in the insulation of your home and replace all your windows for a double-glazing alternative. Once you have this out of the way, it will become a lot easier to warm up the place. This, combined with a fully functional furnace, will do the trick.