When you come home after a long winter day, you expect to walk into a cozy house filled with comfort and warmth. Unfortunately, there may come a day when you walk over the threshold and immediately realize that something is wrong. When the temperature in your home feels off during winter, the most likely culprit is the furnace.
During our 15+ years in business, the Amherst, NY, technicians at Heatwave Heating & Cooling have seen almost every furnace issue under the sun. Here are the five most common furnace problems you’ll encounter.
1. Dirty Air Filter
This one is by far the most common furnace problem, but luckily, it’s also one of the easiest to fix! When the air filter in your furnace gets clogged, it makes it harder for your heater to draw air into the mechanical components. This causes your furnace to work harder than usual. Given enough time, your furnace may even shut off to protect itself from damage. This scares homeowners because, at first glance, it looks like the furnace died. Before you panic, try changing the air filter. Simply shut off the furnace, remove the old filter, and insert the new one. Switch the furnace back on and see if that restores its performance. If it’s still not powering up or producing hot air, give us a call.
2. Broken Thermostat
The thermostat is a device that communicates with your furnace to let it know when it should turn on and how hot it should make your home feel. If the thermostat stops working properly, it can seriously impact your furnace’s performance output. You may notice problems like sporadic heating, short cycling, or the inability to turn on or off. Your home may feel unusually cold or excessively hot. It’s possible that your thermostat has died and needs to be replaced, but the problem could be as simple as dead batteries. Swap out the old batteries for a fresh pair to see if that helps.
3. Ignition Control Issue
One of your furnace’s most important components is the pilot light, sometimes referred to as the ignition control or the ignitor. When the furnace kicks on, the pilot light produces a small flame that burns natural gas to generate power and heat. Without a pilot light, your furnace won’t be able to produce heat. You may hear your furnace repeatedly trying to turn on over and over again without successfully running through a full heating cycle.
Although this issue is fairly easy to recognize, it’s not easy to fix. Any repairs related to the pilot light or ignition switch should be handled by a trained technician from Heatwave Heating & Cooling. Attempting to repair or replace the pilot light without proper training and equipment could lead to burns and other injuries.
4. Wear and Tear
Over the years, your furnace will begin to wear out. Components that have gone through years of heating cycles may become dull, bent, slow, or jostled out of place. If just one of these components fails, it can cause the entire unit to stop working. Figuring out exactly what component is damaged is difficult without an untrained eye. When you call Heatwave Heating & Cooling, we’ll have a technician come out with advanced diagnostic equipment to examine your entire furnace from top to bottom. We’ll quickly determine the origin of the problem. Many furnace issues can be repaired in just one visit.
5. Irregular Maintenance
Just like your car, your furnace also needs regular maintenance. But instead of oil changes and tire rotations, your furnace needs filter changes, cleaning, minor adjustments, and component upgrades. Without routine maintenance, your furnace will begin to break down and age much more rapidly than a well-maintained furnace. We recommend performing at-home maintenance like changing the air filter and updating the thermostat batteries once per quarter. On top of DIY maintenance, you should have professional maintenance performed annually. During a professional furnace tune-up, a technician will clean, lubricate, and calibrate the entire heating system from top to bottom.
Furnace Services in Amherst
If you recognize any of the problems on this list, the heating technicians at Heatwave Heating & Cooling can fix them ASAP. We’ve been Amherst’s go-to furnace repair company since 2005. In that time, our expert technicians have repaired hundreds of furnaces suffering from a wide range of problems. Whether your furnace needs a simple replacement pilot light or something much more complex, we’re the right team for the job.
Heatwave Heating & Cooling is proud to be A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and maintain EPA Energy Star energy efficiency standards. We also service ductless mini-split systems, air purification systems, and tankless water heaters. To schedule furnace service in Amherst, simply give Heatwave Heating & Cooling a call today.
