Home Maintenance Tips to Keep Your System Efficient this Fall

Mid-Atlantic homeowners are busy tackling their fall maintenance chores, inside the home and out. Chief among those chores should be HVAC system maintenance. If you haven’t put it on your list, you should. Here are some tasks to complete before the worst winter weather arrives, so that your furnace works efficiently and without problems throughout the heating season.

Change the Filter

Go ahead and schedule an appointment with your HVAC consultant to inspect your furnace and the other components of your HVAC system, but in the meantime, change your air filter. Changing the filter keeps the moving parts free of dirt. A dirty filter can also impede airflow, causing the system to strain and work less efficiently. Change your filter regularly. If you’re not using a good quality air filter (minimum efficiency reporting value of 8-12), then consider an upgrade.

Furnace/HVAC System Checklist

If your furnace burns gas or oil, it has a heat exchanger, which should be checked every year for cracks and corrosion. Fuel-burning appliances may leak deadly carbon monoxide, so this is one task not to neglect. Also have the gas pressure tested, and the burners examined for soot buildup and corrosion. The burner flame should be blue, not yellow. The ignition system should also be inspected and tested, and cleaned if necessary.

Fall maintenance inspections should include testing the heating system’s thermostat, to ensure that set points are reached, and the controls, to make sure the heat cycles on and off properly.

Other tasks to be performed by a technician: Examine the blower assembly and clean the blower housing, wheel and motor.

Check electrical connections.

Replace faulty wiring.

Check condensate drain for holes and obstructions.

Lubricate any moving parts.

At Sobieski Services, Inc., our goal is to help our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey learn more about energy and home comfort issues – especially HVAC and plumbing issues – so that they can save money and live in healthier, more comfortable homes.

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