Serving the Lubbock Area
Since 1984
For Faster Service Please Call!
Evening and Weekend Appointments Available | Financing Available
Serving the Lubbock Area
For Faster Service Please Call!
If you’re looking to save money on home repairs, don’t look to your furnace. You can take care of many DIY projects around the house, but you should consider the furnace strictly “off limits.”
In other words, the simple answer to the question in the title of this blog is “No.”
However, there’s a more complex answer…
When the cold weather descends on your home, do you start to feel anxious about looking at your monthly energy bills? After the fall, when you don’t have to rely much on your AC and the heater hasn’t yet turned on, you can get used to seeing lower energy costs. But if your winter energy bills do seem too high, it’s a good idea to ask yourself “why?”
You may have trouble with your heater, or perhaps you’ve fallen into some poor habits when it comes to using the HVAC system or how you manage energy consumption in the house. We’ll look at some causes for high heating bills and see what you can do about them.
Every time your home’s furnace turns on, it consumes energy. That’s a given. But a furnace can consume more energy than necessary, and that will cause a drop in the general efficiency of your house.
In this post, we’re going to look at furnace components that can help, or hurt, the efficiency of your home. If they’re currently hurting your home efficiency, then the best course of action is to call our team for furnace repair in Lubbock, TX or other HVAC service. We’ll help you enjoy a comfortable and energy-efficient home!
Short-cycling is a condition that occurs in heat pumps, air conditioners, furnaces, and other HVAC systems. It’s one of the more common problems that can afflict a home’s comfort system, but it also has a tangle of possible causes behind it. Short-cycling is both a symptom of a problem and a problem on its own.
In this post we’ll go into detail about short-cycling, why you want it stopped, and why it happens.
It’s furnace season, and although you might not have your home’s furnace running as often as somebody who lives in Milwaukie or Minneapolis, you’ll still rely on it during the winter. Sometimes it does get extremely cold here in Texas!
With that in mind, we want to pass on some important care and maintenance tips that will help your furnace run safely, efficiently, and effectively through the season.
Our wintertime temperatures do not usually get as cold as our neighbors in the Midwest or the Northeast, with last year’s winter being a huge exception!
That said, it may typically seem pretty silly to worry about heating efficiency too much. When you don’t use yours that much, why should you care about how efficiently it operates? Well, because how efficiently it operates informs how much you spend on your monthly energy bills, and every homeowner wants to save money where they can, right?
That said, there are a number of things you can do to boost your heating efficiency during a standard winter (again, with recent events being a large exception to this rule). Read on to learn more!
Most winters, we don’t use our furnaces for a very long time around here, right? But when we do need them, boy do we need them!
This means they need to work as efficiently and effectively as possible. Also, given how much you use your air conditioner each year and how much that costs, it makes sense that you would like to save as much money as possible on your energy bills during the cooler months.
And maybe you think that the only way to make your furnace use more efficient is to not use it at all. But this is simply not the case, plus it doesn’t do much for your home comfort, right?!
Read on as we uncover some simple ways you can boost furnace efficiency without shutting it off altogether.
Do you know when the best time of year is to schedule furnace maintenance? Many HVAC technicians, including the ones on our staff, will tell you that it’s fall. So, since it’s now winter, does it matter that you haven’t had maintenance done yet–is it too late?
Nope, it’s not too late! Actually, what’s much more important than the timing of your heating maintenance is the consistency of this service. We recommend fall because this is when HVAC pros are less busy with emergency service calls and therefore you’ll find it more convenient to schedule maintenance during this time. But it’s actually most important that you have maintenance done once a year.
On that note, if you have a heat pump system instead of a furnace, you’ll want maintenance done twice a year. But for now, we’re going to talk about why furnace tune-ups are so vital to your comfort, home performance, and efficiency.
The last thing you want to do this winter is sit around wondering if your heater is going to break down at any moment. The good news is, unless you have never had your system professionally tuned up and don’t know any of the signs that your furnace is in disrepair, this likely won’t ever happen.
Oh, what’s that? You don’t know what signs to look out for? That’s okay, that’s what we’re here for!
We want to start by saying that T-word again–tune-up. Also called maintenance, this service is the best way to defend your system against heavy repair needs. Whether you’re utilizing an electric furnace or a gas-powered one, you should have professional maintenance done annually. This helps the furnace function as effectively and efficiently as possible for as long as possible. Plus, maintenance can help you avoid up to 85% of the repairs that a furnace might ever need!
Of course, there’s still that 15%–at some point your furnace will need repair, and so without further ado, here are some signs that it’s time for you to call us for just that:
If your furnace looks anything like the accompanying picture, then, yes, yes it is time for you to replace your furnace. This system doesn’t just look outdated, it is outdated. Continuing to use a system that is decades past its useful lifespan is not going to operate efficiently, or safely.
Useful is the keyword here–you’ll often hear an HVAC professional say that furnaces last about 10-15 years. Of course, if yours is older than this and is still running, that can be hard to believe. Is that professional just out to make money?
No, not at all! What we mean when we talk about lifespan is how long a furnace can last, operating efficiently, powerfully, and safely!
So read on as we uncover some signs that it’s time to go ahead and upgrade that heater of yours.