How to Keep Your Home Safe with These Five Winter Heating and AC Repair Tips | Fort Worth, TX
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With December coming to an end, it’s important to enjoy the time with your friends and family, and take your leisure time low and slow. Nothing ruins the end of the fall however, like your heater suddenly going out, or a carbon monoxide leak forcing your family out onto the streets with the windows open. By staying on top of the heating and ac repair maintenance you have for the holidays, residents of Fort Worth, TX can enjoy themselves without having to worry about having their family or home be in danger.
#1: Regularly Replace Your Air Filters
With the lower temperatures and drier air around the winter time, your heater’s going to be working harder and harder to keep your home warm. In the coldest months, one of the most common heating and ac repair symptoms of an overused heater is a worn down, dirty air filter. Because air filters take on dirt and debris over time, eventually the filter will clog in the vent it’s occupying, inhibiting and eventually stopping the air from flowing through the home. When the air stops, the heater works harder to blow more and more hot air, which turns into a cycle where the air filter just gets dirtier and dirtier. When the heater gets overused, some of the first parts to fail are the most important ones, like the heating coil or parts in the fan. Even its tedious, it’s important to replace these filters, and call a heating and ac repair technician when the parts that get stressed in your heater need to be replaced.
#2: Regularly Inspect Your Thermostat
While this can happen any time of the year, a thermostat can go out in the winter or late fall really easily. Because there isn’t as much ventilation in the home around the winter months, a thermostat can quietly gather dust and dirt that interfere with the electronics of the thermostat, leading to the heater not running as hot. If you arrange for a heating and ac repair technician to perform regular checks on your thermostat it’ll rundown less often and save you money in the long run by not running too hot or too cold.
#3: Winter-Proof Your Heat Pumps
Even though most Fort Worth, TX homeowners have furnaces installed in their homes, some residents have an additional external heat pump, to heat their home in the colder winter months. When especially cold weather hits, parts of the heat pump that aren’t prepared for insulation can freeze over, becoming inoperable until the parts like the heating coil or fan are thawed and in some cases, replaced. Because Texas usually has milder climates, some heat pumps commercially available might not come with anti-frost settings, so first check to make sure your heat pump has the ability to protect itself from sudden freezing temperatures. In the event your heat pump isn’t heat proof, you have two options. Have a heating and ac repair technician either install insulating material around your heat pump so it isn’t so vulnerable, or replace the unit with one that comes with anti-frost features. In these cases, replacing the whole unit can get expensive, but the tradeoff is inspecting the insulation for wear and tear becomes less of a hassle, and your heat pump does a better job of taking care of itself. Also make sure the heat-pump isn’t below a leaking gutter or otherwise exposed to obscene amounts of water, this would also contribute to the general wear and tear of the unit.
#4: Insulate Your Pipes from the Elements
While cold snaps aren’t too common around the country, even sunny Fort Worth, TX may get to experience freezing winter temperatures. When these cold snaps come around, you may find the parts of your radiators, and other piping start to freeze over, leaving your home without heat for as long as these parts are frozen. To combat this, you can start by shutting off the water to your home in the meantime. Call a heating and ac repair technician to come out and install either insulating material around the parts in your radiator, or heating cables that periodically heat your radiator when not in use.
#5: Take Steps to Prevent Your Pilot Light from Going Out
For furnaces that use pilot lights, it gets easier over the years for simple malfunctions to stop the entire thing from working. One of the simplest issues for example is the pilot light gets to be too weak, either from the orifice being broken or too dirty. Have a heating and ac repair technician come out to look at the pilot light in the event that it’s not turning on at all, because that may be a legitimate part breakdown. Another case of a pilot light going out is a draft in your home blowing out the flame before it can light your furnace. A heating and ac repair tech can come out to troubleshoot for where the draft may be coming from, but covering any holes where the draft could be coming from with tape could be a short-term fix. Finally, you can check to make sure that the gas regulator in your home is functioning. Not only would your pilot light not turn on in this case, but the heater, stove, dryer, and anything else that used gas in your home wouldn’t turn on due to lack of fuel. In these cases, you have to call the gas company to perform maintenance on your regulator.
In Conclusion:
It can get to be difficult staying on top of the parts of your home that keep your family warm and safe, but staying on top of these simple heating and ac repair tasks can not only protect your home, but prevent any expensive mistakes from happening in the long term. Contact One Hour Air Conditioning and Heating to schedule an appointment today!