Furnace cleaning is one of the most basic practices you can do to keep your heating unit in top shape. Unfortunately, many homeowners don’t know when to clean it, so you will often hear them asking, how do I know if my furnace needs cleaning?
To help you out, here are signs it’s time to clean your furnace as given by heating service repair professionals:
You have excess dust in your building.
Have you noticed your house is much dustier than before? Chances are the dust is also rubbing off to your appliance. If your HVAC unit is dirty and you haven’t replaced your filters in a while, chances are your appliance hasn’t been removing debris and dust from the air, and it’s instead spreading them through the ducts to your entire building.
If you don’t clean the furnace early enough, the grimy buildup will cause your appliance to fail, leading to plenty of furnace problems.
The furnace frames are yellow.
In a properly functioning furnace, the flame should be blue. Sometimes the flame will burn orange or yellow when there is an incorrect mix of gas and oxygen, which is a sign of a dirty burner.
If you don’t get rid of this problem early enough, you risk having a carbon monoxide leak, which is dangerous.
The cool thing is you can fix this problem by cleaning your gas furnace. You can do the cleaning by yourself or hire a professional to help you out.
You can’t remember when you last cleaned your appliance.
To run optimally, your furnace needs cleaning, so if you can’t remember the last time you cleaned it, you have been neglecting it, which is dangerous. Don’t even inspect the appliance to confirm whether there is a lot of buildup dust. Go ahead and begin the cleaning.
Your energy bills are going up every day.
Your energy bills can go up for various reasons. If your furnace is pretty new, you haven’t added a new appliance, and your electricity bills are on the rise, take a look at your heating appliance. Is it dirty? Do the cleaning.
You can smell the dust.
Do you smell dust when you turn on your appliance? That’s a clear sign there is a lot of dust built up in your appliance, and you should get rid of it as soon as possible.
How do you clean the furnace?
To effectively clean the furnace, you need to follow a set of steps. These steps include:
Step 1: Shut down the system
You don’t want to get hurt when you are cleaning the system, so begin switching off the fuel and electrical supply. In most furnaces, shutting down the system involves a flick of a switch.
Step 2: Clean the combustion chamber
It’s in the combustion chamber where the fuel mixes with air and is ignited, generating heat. It’s also here where you will find water vapor, carbon soot, carbon dioxide, and other materials.
If you go for a long time without cleaning the chamber, soot can buildup causing the chamber to corrode. Cleaning the chamber is easy as all you need to do is scrape out the built-up carbon using a small wire brush.
You should then remove the loose material with an industrial shop. While at it, inspect the chamber for holes or corrosion before replacing the cover. If the chamber has holes or any other defects, fix them before replacing the cover.
Step 3: Take a look at the flue pipe
It’s common for the flue pipe to leak, which is dangerous as this exposes you or your family members to carbon monoxide. As you are cleaning the system, pay attention to the flue pipe, especially in the area where the pipe meets the furnace.
If there are holes or serious corrosion, fix it before you do anything.
Step 4: Change/replace the air filter.
Furnace cleaning is incomplete if you don’t clean or replace the air filter. If the filter is still in good shape, clean it using a vacuum cleaner, but if worn out or too dirty, you have to replace it. You can do the work yourself or let a furnace repair service Long Island provider do it.