If you ask any heating professional about the subject, you will learn that most home and business owners are not really sure about furnace maintenance; to begin with, they are not sure about how often they should have professionals such as Pacific Coast Carbon take a look at their furnace or if they should even whether they should even spend money on furnace maintenance at all. Considering all the bills that we all have to constantly pay, it is perfectly understandable that people would like to avoid paying for anything else at all, especially if the furnace in question appears to be working just fine; why fix something that is not broken, right?
What you have to consider when it comes to whether furnace actually makes sense or not is how important your furnace is to you. Imagine if your furnace happens to break down during the coldest days of winter. What if you cannot get it repaired right away? In such a situation, you and your loved ones are going to be very uncomfortable and you will probably end up spending more for repairs than you would have on maintenance; but just how necessary is that maintenance?
The Importance of Furnace Maintenance
Of course, if you ask a heating professional whether furnace maintenance really is necessary you can expect to get a resounding yes! That might make you think that this professional is telling you that simply to get your business, but that is not necessarily the case; that fact of the matter is that furnace maintenance really is necessary, if you want your furnace to work properly and keep it from breaking down, that is. Something that should certainly not be overlooked is the fact that furnace manufacturers recommend that their customers have maintenance performed at least on a yearly basis. Obviously, if anyone knows anything about whether a furnace needs maintenance or not it is most definitely the people who produce them. If you look closely at your furnace’s warranty when you purchase it (as you should) you will probably find something in there about having to have regular furnace performed in order not to void the warranty. Just think about how important regular maintenance is for your car; if you stop taking your car in for tune-ups it will probably not break down right away, but it eventually will and maybe at a really bad moment. The same thing can be said about your furnace.
What Happens during Furnace Maintenance
When you hire professionals to go to your property for furnace maintenance there are a number of things that they will check to make sure that it is working properly and that it continues to do so. Depending on various factors, these professionals might begin by checking your venting system to ensure that nothing is blocking it and keeping it from allowing air to flow appropriately throughout your house, building, or other property. This initial inspection might simply be visual but can also include a draft inspection and a combustion analysis to check for carbon monoxide and more, depending on the circumstances. The heat exchanger is another crucial component that will be checked at this point. Every single safety switch will be tested since any malfunction could lead to your furnace overheating and possibly causing a fire. Other important things that professional heating specialists will ensure are working properly include your furnace’s burners, the ignition device, the combustion blower, the main blower, the drainage system, the wiring, and more. It sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? That is because it is but all of these things should be checked thoroughly at least once the year to make sure that they are working exactly as they are supposed to and to catch any possible problems in the making so that they can be taken care before they cause your furnace to break down.
Doing your Own Furnace Maintenance
Couldn’t you just do furnace maintenance yourself? Maybe you happen to be someone who likes to work with his hands and you could conceivably learn by watching a few videos but even then you would lack the proper tools to perform furnace maintenance adequately, tools that are not exactly cheap. Plus, without any real experience, you might break something and make things even more expensive. With that in mind, you can clearly see that hiring experienced professionals makes a lot more sense; once these professionals have performed proper furnace maintenance, you can rest assured that your furnace will not stop working midway through winter.