Your furnace may be the furthest thing from your mind in these dog days of summer, but it will be time to flip the thermostat switch before you know it. Have you made your furnace tune-up appointment yet? You don't want to put it off, and you definitely don't want to mistake your annual tune-up for optional maintenance. 

A furnace tune-up is important for several reasons:

  • It helps you save money. Every furnace will lose a little bit of efficiency from year to year, but a neglected furnace will lose it at a much faster rate. If you take care of your furnace, your furnace will take care of your heating costs. What’s more, a tune-up gives your HVAC technician an opportunity to find and fix small problems before they turn into big, expensive ones.
  • It keeps your family safe. As a furnace ages, the risk of cracks in the heat exchanger increases. These cracks can allow deadly carbon monoxide to leak into your home. An annual tune-up is a critical safety inspection for this and other problems that could potentially lead to smoke, fire or other dangerous emergencies.
  • It extends the life of your furnace. The typical furnace lasts around 15 years, but if you don’t get your tune-up every year, good luck making it to that benchmark. On the other hand, if you take great care of your furnace, it could serve you for many years beyond that point. 
  • It gets your furnace clean before fall. Have you ever turned on your furnace for the first heating cycle of the season, only to have your home fill up with noxious air? That’s the smell of dust burning off of your furnace’s heating elements. If you get your furnace tuned up before you need to use it, you can avoid this unpleasant autumn ritual.
  • It ensures proper airflow. Even if your furnace is doing its job right, that warm air won’t get where you want it without proper air pressure. A check on your air handler is also a typical part of a furnace tune-up, which helps make sure that your HVAC fan is ready for winter.
  • Your warranty may require it. Did you buy a new furnace within the past few years? If it’s still under warranty, it’s likely that annual maintenance is a condition of keeping that warranty valid. You wouldn’t want to suffer an expensive breakdown only to find that your warranty won’t cover the repair.
  • It helps you plan for replacement. As we said above, your furnace gets a little less efficient every year. Running your furnace until it breaks down for good might seem like the best way to delay the cost of replacement, but your heating bills could be sky high in that last year or two -- and you don’t want to sit around shivering while you wait for a new installation. Talk to your technician after each tune-up to make a plan for proactive replacement, which will give you time to budget for it.

Don’t get left out in the cold. If you haven’t made your tune-up appointment yet, contact your local One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning without delay.