Essential Spring Furnace Maintenance Tips

Spring cleaning and furnace maintenance are two concepts that usually go hand in hand. Furnaces are the closest most natural thing you could get to a heater. The best part is that it is completely detached from your electricity bill. So not only does a furnace make your house look amazing, and is both practical and decorative but it also has no effect on your pockets during those long and cold winter nights. Yes it may require a fair bit of maintenance and poking and prodding of wood to get the heat going but it is nothing too inconvenient or hard to do. Spring furnace cleaning is an essential part of spring cleaning because it ensures that you don’t have a blocked or dirty or difficult to clean furnace when the next fall or winter comes around. Keeping a clean furnace is also hygienic and healthy for you and the people living in your house, so make sure this gets done at least once or twice during the spring or summer months.

If you are Canadian then you will understand the essential nature of cleaning a furnace since you spend most of the year in the cold. So typically, in a Canadian household the furnace is run from October to March or April which is about 6 to 7 months of furnace usage. This kind of usage makes cleaning out a furnace absolutely necessary. And as for the people that have HVAC systems that are obviously more expensive they can have heat for winter months and coolness for the summer months. It has its perks of course. But that also means that these systems are being run throughout the year and at some point need to be cleaned out and if there are some glitches, they need to be fixed. But regardless of the system you use, the excessive or constant use means there will be some amount of wear and tear or damage done from time to time. So giving it a check-up and replacing worn out parts is essential if you intend on keeping warm for the rest of the year. Each system should be cleaned out and repaired at least twice a year, that is, before winter when you are about to use it and after winter when you are getting ready to use your air conditioner.

When cleaning your furnace there are just three major or essential steps that you should be making sure are done. Missing one step could mean that you system will either shut down or not work to its full capacity later on. The first step should be pressure washing or condensing your furnace unit or heat pump. This is necessary because a lot of dirt and grim gets stuck in the machine, bit of stone chips manage to find their way in there too. Plus pressure washing removes even the leaves that tend to get sucked in and lodge their way into the machine. The best time to pressure wash your machine is a little while after winter when you are absolutely certain that you will not be needing your furnace again for a while.

Pressure washing essential in the entire process. A clean machine always runs smoother and also last longer. The dirt and slush does not ruin and send it to an early grave. So what you spend in time, you save in money. The next step in the process is checking your filter. Usually a lot of dirt and debris gets clogged up in your filter which you will see once you use it for a long time. If there is visible dirtiness or clogging it is absolutely necessary that you change your filter this very instant however, if the dirt is only minimal then you could wait and change it just before fall. Either way you cannot forget to change the filter.

Cleaning out the filter is very necessary if you want a properly running system. Usually filter colours are white, cream or grey but even if the filter does not look dirty you should change it at least every three to four months as a precautionary measure. Writing the date on the filter can help you identify if you have been using the filter for a long time. If you aren’t aware or unsure of any of the processes then you should get a professional to inspect your system. They will know exactly what needs to be done or left alone and can teach you how to go about fixing, repairing or cleaning your machine out if and when necessary. Regularly checking your machine and cleaning it out will ensure that it lasts longer and that you also get the best performance level out of it. Doing all this takes less time than one would expect and is worth it.