The best thing that you can do for your home heating system, regardless of what type of system you may use, is to schedule routine heating maintenance with trained professionals that you can trust to do the job right. Heating maintenance must occur each and every year. If you don’t have your heater tuned up annually, then there is just no way in which you can hope for it to function at peak efficiency and performance levels. There’s one step you yourself have to take, though.
In addition to scheduling annual maintenance, and we hope that you’ll take advantage of all that our maintenance program has to offer, you also need to be changing your air filter regularly. Sure, we’ll swap it out for a new one during your annual tune-up, but once a year just is not enough. If you use a furnace or a heat pump to heat your home, then changing the air filter is integral in ensuring successful heating in Rockford, MI.
Reduced Airflow Is a Big Problem
If you went snorkeling, you wouldn’t want a coffee stirrer to breathe through, would you? Of course not! You’d struggle to get enough air into your lungs, and it would also be difficult to force air back out and up through that narrow passageway. So why would you force your furnace or heat pump to struggle in much the same way? It’s going to have a very tough time of doing its job if it has to overexert itself just to force heated air throughout your home!
The issue of reduced airflow in forced air heating systems is a serious one. There is a reason why ducts need to be properly sized and laid out in your home, after all, and why you don’t want an undersized heater in place. When we install your forced air heating system the right way, it is going to function properly. If you fail to keep a fresh air filter in place, however, you are going to notice that your heater’s performance quality begins to slip.
Problems Caused by Dirty Air Filters
What kinds of problems are we talking about here?
- Reduced energy efficiency, meaning that you’ll be overpaying to heat your home because the system has to work harder than it should in order to force air throughout your home.
- Short cycling as the heater begins to overheat, shutting down to prevent damage to itself. The constant starting and stopping is only going to reduce efficiency further, while also putting a lot of unnecessary strain on your HVAC system.
- Poor performance quality in general. Cold spots, short run times, icing on the coil in heat pumps—the problems really snowball when you give them the chance.
Don’t pay too much for too little in return from your heater. And definitely don’t put yourself in a position to pay for repairs that could have been avoided by something as simple as replacing your air filter more frequently. Reach out to a member of our team if you have any questions about the air filter or your heater in general.
