Keeping your air conditioner running during the summer is important, but so is staying warm when the weather starts to get cooler. To make sure that your furnace is always working optimally, learn on this page everything you need to know about your heating system and the value an excellent furnace repair service can make to it. Yours should be a day and night furnace—one that you can feel comfortable turning on at any time.
What is a Furnace?
Furnaces heat your home, but it’s important to understand that not all furnaces are the same. Far from it, in fact: different heaters use different resources to provide them with energy. Many systems across the United States use a floor furnace and run on natural gas, but there are plenty of other options for homeowners. Learning about the different kinds of furnaces available to you and understanding their comparative advantages can be an essential step in choosing the right model for your home. It can also have an impact on your ability to find repair service when you need it most.
If you don’t already have a natural gas floor furnace, you might want to consider your options. One of the most common types is the electrical furnace. Electrical furnaces typically require less maintenance than their natural gas fuelled counterparts, making them an easy choice for homeowners who are pressed for time or not particularly handy. Furthermore, many electric furnaces are less expensive up front than natural gas systems and are easier to install. They also do not produce emissions, making them safer in some regards than gas units. The primary disadvantage of an electrical heating system is that it incurs higher running costs than a gas furnace because it uses a larger amount of energy to raise the temperature in your home.
There are other options available besides electrical furnaces, however. Some people choose to use a system that runs on hot water or steam. These systems provide what is known as “radiant heat”, causing a feeling that some people find more comfortable than those produced by other systems. Because the water travels through small pipes, hot water furnaces are also more compact in size, and apt to take up less space than other kinds of furnaces.
The disadvantage of a hot water or steam heater is twofold. First, hot water heaters tend to be more expensive to install than traditional gas furnaces, making them out of reach for some homeowners. Second, a water heater can rarely be adapted for use with an air conditioner, making central heating and air a much harder goal to accomplish.
Heat pumps are one of the other options available to homeowners. A heat pump can be thought of as a “reversible” air conditioning system. It pulls warmth out of the air to cool your home in the summer and projects it back into the air in the winter to heat your home. Because heat pumps use compressors, thermostats, and separate units inside and out of the house, they provide the necessary infrastructure for complete climate control year-round.
Choosing the type of heating system to use in your home is a decision that can affect the long-term results in your home significantly. While natural gas is certainly popular, other options exist—each of which comes with its pros and cons. Do your research, and make sure that you settle on a choice that will suit both your home and your budget.
Furnace Repair, Parts and Filters
There are many kinds of furnaces commonly used throughout the United States, but all of them have one thing in common: they need proper maintenance. Proper upkeep helps your furnace remain functional for longer periods of time without requiring major repairs, so it’s an essential part of every furnace owner’s routine—or at least it ought to be. If you have an HVAC, you’ll need to get into the habit of taking care of its many components during peak seasons. That means looking after your AC in the summer, and your furnace in the winter. Regular service calls in the fall or spring are obviously advisable, but when your systems are in use, there are plenty of things you can do by yourself to help extend its lifespan.
Many AC owners already understand the importance of changing the filters on a regular basis, but some people fail to realise that the same is equally true of furnaces. Just like an air conditioner, your furnace has air filters that need to be replaced on a regular basis to keep your heating system efficient and your home safe. Dirty furnace filters make your system work too hard, increasing the risk that individual components will burn out before their time and that you’ll have to spend large amounts of money replacing them. Dirty furnace filters can also allow contaminants to enter your system, which increases congestion in your home and can even become a fire hazard.
You should check your furnace filters at least once every month and replace them if they’re dirty, but this is far from the only kind of maintenance that your furnace deserves. In fact, there are at least two other things that every furnace owner should get into the habit of doing to keep it safe and efficient.
First, check the exhaust outlets on your furnace before starting it up for the season. Exhaust vents ensure that carbon monoxide and other potentially toxic gasses leave your system instead of becoming trapped inside, where they can build up and become dangerous. While you’re at it, look at your gas lines to ensure that there are no leaks. Since gas is combustible, you want it safely inside your unit at all times.
Lastly, you’ll want to have a couple of minor things looked at periodically to ensure that your day and night furnace is optimally energy efficient at all hours. For example, the removal of dirt or grime from the surfaces of your burners and cleaning of your heat exchangers is important. Performing these tasks will help reduce your long term operating costs by ensuring that your heater can produce the most heat possible with the energy it consumes.
Benefits of Carrier Furnace Systems
No matter what kind of heater your home uses, you’ll need to make sure that you can find professional help to keep it running if it ever experiences problems. Your choice of heating technology may have a large impact on the contractors available to you and the services they provide. This is because different technicians often specialize in various types of heating technology, and different systems have different average furnace repair costs.
Always make sure to call a professional who is skilled and experienced in providing service for the type of heater that you use. You don’t want to call an electrician to work on your natural gas heater, for example.
You can save a lot of worry at the outset when you’re choosing the kind of heater that you install in your home. Because HVAC contractors tend to be easier to find than technicians who focus on other systems, central heating and air is often a good way to go. Carrier systems are an especially good choice since they often balance quality with cost effectiveness and replacement parts for them can be easier to obtain than those for other models. They’re widely considered easy to fix and easy to use—generally speaking, a Carrier furnace is a day and night heater. If you have chosen to install a Carrier HVAC in your home, you may also be more likely to have access to experienced contractors, since these systems are popular in most residential regions and the people who work on them have usually completed many jobs successfully.
Once you’ve found an experienced and licensed furnace repair service technician who can work expressly on the kind of system in your home, you’ll want to exchange some information with them. Start by telling them a bit about your furnace—is it a floor furnace or does it use a blower? How is it powered? Then go into what’s wrong with your furnace. If you don’t know what the exact problem is, describe the symptoms. Your home might not be heating up fast enough, for example, or maybe you want to know why your utility bills are climbing while your habits stay the same. The technician should then be able to offer you a quote for the service you need, or a price for troubleshooting. You can also enter annual service contracts with some HVAC technicians, where you’ll pay an annual fee to have them visit your home once or twice a year and check your system. This is often cost effective for homeowners who develop healthy relationships with a single contractor.
Carrier Furnace Parts
One big concern for many day and night furnace owners is the potential cost of having their systems fixed. It’s worth noting that in every case, the costs of repairs will vary somewhat. Like air conditioning, furnace repair service expenses depend in part on the size and location of your home, as well as its energy efficiency and existing climate control infrastructure. However, it’s still possible to get a good idea of what each component in your system might cost to replace so that you can know whether your contractor is quoting you a price in the right ballpark.
Natural gas furnaces have some of the largest range when it comes to possible furnace repair service prices. Minor repairs may cost barely over $100, while an entirely new heat exchanger can run up to $1200. Compare this to the costs of repairing a hot water boiler (which come in at less than $600 in most cases), or an electric furnace, where the costs are often below $300.
Heat pumps fall somewhere in the middle of the pack. A malfunctioning thermostat might be around $300, while a broken defrost control board can cost twice as much. Still, given the ability of a heat pump to facilitate both the heating and cooling processes, it’s a relatively cost-effective option—especially when you consider what the repair costs for a standalone air conditioner can be.
Another smart way to shop for furnace parts is to compare the price for each part across different brands. When you’re doing this, make sure to take long term savings into account instead of just looking at the upfront price tags for each part. For example, Carrier furnace parts could cost slightly more than comparable products by another brand, but this cost could easily be offset by the relative energy efficiency and longevity of Carrier furnace products, making them more cost-effective in the long run.
Regardless of the brand of equipment you install or the frequency with which you use it, access to a reliable and knowledgeable heater repair service is an absolute must. For a free consultation to investigate our low-cost, high-reward maintenance programs to avoid costly repairs do not hesitate to connect Valley Comfort Heating and Cooling.