HVAC Heater Tips | Heating Tips

Hey, what's up everyone? Derek Cole here with Simmons One Hour Heating and Air, and I wanted to bring you a few tips for your heater and the maintenance this time of year because we're heading into the winter season. Uh, so getting your heater ready and making sure it's checked and good to go is always a good idea. So I wanted to share with you a few tips Number 1, it sounds so simple. It really does sound simple. Check your thermostat settings. Check your thermostat settings, right? Yes, we get the phone call quite a bit of people having no heat. I have no heat in my house. And we get there and it's a schedule problem or it's a mode problem. So Make sure your thermostat is on heat if you want heat, or if it's on auto, you have it set to the right temperatures. Remember, when you have auto set, uh, it has a temperature for cooling, a temperature for heating. Uh, so basically you're saying if it goes above— see, you guys, still on 75 for cooling— if it goes above 75 degrees in the house you're going to bring on cooling. Say you have the heat set to 72. If it gets below 72 in the house, it's going to bring on the heating. So make sure you have the auto set up correctly or you have it in the right mode. If you want heat, make sure it's on heat again, or make sure the auto feature, when it's on, you have those right temperatures you want. To be comfortable. And there is— I get the question too, what's the right temperature? Well, the right temperature is whatever you are comfortable at. Um, I'm a big believer in you should not be uncomfortable in your house. So whatever that set point is, you know, if it's 68 on heating or 64 on heating or 75 on heating, Whatever you're comfortable at is the temperature I recommend for your home. So check your thermostat settings. Also check gas connections. Make sure your gas connections are good. Look for any signs of smoke or soot. Or when you go to your furnace, you know, when you go to it, listen. If you hear any kind of a hissing noise, that could— all this could be some kind of a gas leak. Other signs include maybe a higher gas bill than usual. If you feel nauseous, if you have a bad smell, all these things could be a sign of a gas leak. If you have any gas products in the house. Also recommend a— I would always have a carbon monoxide alarm low to the ground, not high up, low to the ground carbon monoxide alarm. Carbon, CO, carbon monoxide is odorless, tasteless, you can't smell it, you can't feel it, you can't sense it, But if you have a gas appliance in the house, anything on combustion, uh, anything in the house with combustion, you should have a CO alarm, carbon monoxide alarm, installed in the sleeping areas as low to the ground. The wall outlet at the ground is good, is good. You don't want it high, you want it as low as you can get it so it can detect a problem as soon as possible. Also check the gas pressure. Check the gas pressure, uh, you know, fluctuate. It's kind of, you know, I like to relate to— I like to relate to tire pressure. You know, just because my tire pressure was good last winter doesn't mean when I go into this winter it's going to be good. Uh, I kind of correlate gas pressure the same way. Check your gas pressure every time you either get your tank filled up or you change seasons. Check that gas pressure, make sure it's on the right pressure for natural gas or LP, whichever one you have. Make sure you have the right gas pressure going to that system. Also, if you have a gas appliance Examine the burner combustion. Uh, we all, we all probably common knowledge tells you it should be a blue flame. It shouldn't be a yellow, red. All this should not be at the burner. It should be a nice clean blue flame when you're burning correctly. Uh, if it's anything more than that, you're having too much, too much oxygen. Involved with it. So you're having a combustion problem, and that's never good. You don't want a combustion problem. You want to be a nice blue flame to make sure you're burning correctly. Also, with that gas system, you have what's called a heat exchanger. A heat exchanger— you have the burners, you have the heat exchanger. So the burners are are going to go into the exchanger. The heat exchanger is actually going to hold that fire in the box, and when that air comes across it, it's going to heat it up. It's the heat exchanger. Now, there should be— I'm talking about combustion, or talk about, you know, gas connections, or smells, or the exchanger. There is no point in which the gas should be in the air stream, the burner to come to heat exchanger. The heat exchanger is sealed, properly sealed. So make sure you check your heat exchanger for any holes, any cracks, anything that exposes direct gas into the air stream. That is what you do not want. Another reason for a CO alarm is because you want to make sure you do not have toxic levels of CO in the house. Whenever you have a hole in the heat exchanger or you have something, something improper there, something has failed, the integrity is gone— whenever you have that happen, you bring in the possibility of carbon monoxide into the home. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't even want the possibility of a cracked heat exchanger, the possibility of CO getting into the home. So if I had a gas unit, I would get my, my heater maintenance done before the season starts to make sure I'm good to go for the season, make sure my gas pressure is good, make sure my burner is burning good. Make sure my heat exchanger is good. Make sure my CO alarm is good. I would have all those in place to make sure I'm good to go before my heat starts. Now, if you already started your heat, this still is something you can have checked out to make sure you're burning properly. Once you get that gas bill and it's too high It's, it's— you can't do it. You can't go backwards. You can't go back and fix it. Uh, it is what it is. You don't want CO in the house. You don't want a heat exchanger problem. Uh, you want to catch it as soon as you can, as soon as possible, um, because heat exchangers— I mean, Goodman, uh, gives a lifetime warranty on some of these furnaces for the heat exchanger. The reason is because they have tested and tested and tested, and they have reliable heat exchangers that, you know, have very small failure rates. But anytime you have metal that is expanding with heat, contracting with cold, expanding with heat, then contracting, that metal Over time, it's getting wear and tear. It's getting wear and tear, so it now has the possibility of failure. So make sure your heat exchanger is checked and you're good to go for the season. I'll leave you with this. I'll leave you with what is probably my, my favorite thing to talk about. Excuse me, got a drink there. Probably my favorite thing to talk about: change your air filter every time, every 30 days. Have an alarm on your phone, somewhere on your calendar, somewhere that will go off and remind you to check your air filter. Over and over again, Energy Star has told us this is the one thing you can do to affect— directly affect your energy efficiency. You change and check your air filter. Take it very seriously. The unit has run a marathon this last summer. It is fixing to run the marathon of the winter. You want to make sure it can breathe. You don't want it breathing out of a straw. First of all, you want to get your unit cleaned, checked, maintenance, but at the very least, you want to change that air filter. It's the one thing that you can do yourself. You can do it yourself. You don't need a pro. You don't need an All-Pro Tech to come out. You don't need any of that. You can do it yourself. But check and change— check or change your air filter. Now we're coming off of the fall season as we speak, so we're coming off of very, uh, low runtimes. The unit, you know, doesn't run a whole lot when it's, you know, 75 degrees outside and then 60 degrees at night. There's not a whole lot of runtime unless you're intentional about, uh, the runtime, which I am, but I'm a lot different than normal people because I'm in the business and I want my air to, to come through. I want to exchange, I want to activate my MicroPowerGuard, I want the air to come through to my coal scrubber, uh, OxyQuantum system, make sure I have clean air. It's going off very low runtime, so probably after a hot summer it probably doesn't need to be changed every 30 days leading up to a winter. It's probably not having enough runtime, at least not in this area of southeastern North Carolina, but it's fixing to get there. So what I'm saying is, if you have not checked your filter, you know, in a few months, it's probably not devastating, but it probably does need to be changed out. But go ahead and make that note Make that reminder in your phone. Make that reminder in your phone or your calendar, wherever you want to put it. Check and change your air filter every 30 days. Now, for a top 10 heater maintenance tip, if you like this, I want to actually read the PDF. I'll link it up, uh, right here in the notes, but, uh, it's simmons1air.com heater PDF, simmons1hr.com/heater-pdf. Top 10 heater maintenance tips, um, but my overall tip would be get a Happy Heat restoration, get your unit checked, serviced, make sure you're good to go for the winter season ahead.