Warning Signs Something Is Wrong With Your Furnace
With winter right around the corner, addressing issues with your furnace is essential for keeping your home warm when temperatures begin to drop. Your home’s heating system may be showing signs of wear and tear and that means it’s time for maintenance or a replacement.
If you’ve never gotten regular maintenance on your furnace and are beginning to notice signs that it’s about to go out, you should consider taking action sooner rather than later. Our team of heating experts has listed behaviors that could mean your home’s furnace is close to kicking the bucket and it’s time to be repaired or replaced.
1. Your Furnace Makes Strange Noises
Any time something goes wrong with your furnace, you will likely hear a strange noise coming from it that you never heard before like grinding or screeching. Strange sounds coming from your heater could mean there is a mechanical issue or a blade is burnt or bent. You won’t always be able to notice what the problem is without a technician to help you uncover why your furnace is making a noise.
2. Your Furnace is Older
Whether you’re a new homeowner with an old furnace or have owned your home for at least 20 years without maintaining, replacing, or repairing your furnace, then it’s likely time that you contact a technician to help you make a decision for your next steps. Some furnaces give out after only eight years and any unit that’s older than ten years should be replaced.
Your technician can assist you with finding a newer, more efficient furnace for your home.
3. Discolored Pilot Flame
In all furnaces, a consistently blue fire flame in a gas furnace is the color you should always see. A change in color, like a yellow flame, could mean there’s carbon monoxide in the air. If you notice the flame on your heater is flickering, then that means the gas isn’t burning as much as it should.
4. Cold Spots in Your Home
Are there rooms in your home that just feel cold no matter how high you turn up your heater? When a heater begins to lose its ability to keep your home warm, you will begin to notice cold spots throughout different rooms. Usually, rooms that are farther away from the HVAC system tend to get cold because they’re too far away for the heat to travel through the ventilation system.
5. Higher Energy Bills
Did you notice a drastic difference between your energy costs from past bills and your current bill? If you’ve noticed a pretty high jump in your energy costs, your HVAC system may be the culprit. A professional technician can assess your system to find any malfunctions that could have lead to energy inefficiency.
6. Strange Smells from Your Unit
A dusty or dry smell when you turn on your furnace for the first time after a while is completely normal. Replacing your heater’s filter can easily help relieve the smell and also catch particles floating in the air that can cause smells. However, smells become abnormal when the smell continues even after you’ve replaced the air filter.
Odors like gas can spell trouble, so you should certainly call your utility company and a technician as soon as possible to weed out the root of the gas smell in case it’s your furnace.
7. Illness and Poor Ventilation
In some cases, people have experienced feeling sick due to poorly ventilated units. Buildup from dust, dirt and other factors can accumulate and trigger respiratory issues or symptoms of a cold that can cause illness.
Routine Maintenance and Care
Getting your heater maintained regularly is the first key step to keeping your heating working properly before any season. Our experts at Bee's Knees Plumbing and Heating Ltd. want to help you keep your heater maintained and working at its best so that you can rest assured that we will get the job done! Call us at (250) 800-1373 to schedule an appointment and general information about our landscaping services.