furnace maintenance
Furnace maintenance every year can not only save you money on your heating bill, but it can also prolong the life of y0ur furnace and reduce repairs.
A professional tune up of your furnace or heating is worth the money! Below we have outlined how to tune up your furnace for you do-it-yourselfers.
1. The first thing you want to do is examine your furnace. Do you see any black soot or smoky residue on or around the furnace? If so, you will want to clean this up with a soft cloth.
2. Next turn on your heater and turn up the thermostat so the furnace goes on. The flames in the burner should be blue and steady, not yellow or orange and flickering. Soot build-up or yellow flames denote poor combustion, if you see signs of either, stop what you are doing and call a heating technician to fix this issue.
3. If everything looks good so far, turn the thermostat back down and let your furnace cool.To be extra safe you can turn off the circuit breaker that powers your furnace. After the furnace has cooled off, remove the sides of your furnace and use a vacuum to get rid of any dust that may have accumulated. Use a damp cloth to clean the blades of the blower fan and any other areas the vacuum didn’t reach. While you have the sides off, check and see if your blower fan has oil cups at the ends of the central shaft (some are sealed units that don’t need oiling). If there are oil cups you will want to give them a few drops of oil.
4. If your blower fan has a fan belt, check the tension and condition. The underside should be free of cracks, but over time, age and heat will dry out the rubber belt and cause cracks. If there are cracks in the belt, replace it with one of the same size. Checking the tension of the belt is as simple as pushing down on it. There should be about 1/2 inch of play in a properly adjusted belt. If you have more or less movement than that, you can adjust the tension by loosening the electric motor mounts and moving the motor to create the proper tension. Having the correct tension is very important so if you are feeling like this is a bit beyond your scope call your heating technician. An improper fitting fan felt can damage your heating system.
5. Reattach the furnace panels, and turn the circuit breaker back on if you turned it off earlier.
6. The best advice is to change your furnace filter once every couple of months. So go ahead and change it now!
