Emergency Furnace Tips Every Edmonton Homeowner Needs Before the Next Cold Snap
Hey there. Welcome back to the Hinse Brothers YouTube channel. My name is Trevor and I’m here with Adrien Hinse who is one of the brothers in Hinse Brothers, and today we’re going to talk about emergency furnace repairs. What do you do? It’s the dead of winter, middle of the night, and you notice a chill is in the air, your [music] furnace is not working. We’re going to talk with Adrian today uh from Hinse Brothers and we’re going to talk all about, you know, what do you do in the event of your furnace dying or furnace emergency?
Okay, man. here we are. Right now, it’s December in Edmonton, Alberta, and in Sherwood Park. And this weekend, we’re going to have minus30s. Yeah. Minus30 Celsius. That’s without windchill. That’s just straight up cold. And we know the calls are going to come. What’s the first thing that you tell people should their furnace, you know, stop working?
Well, actually, I’d tell people right now, actually, probably a little while ago is a good time to get prepared, right? The first thing I’d do is, you know, make sure your filter isn’t overdue for replacement. Always have some spares., in the really cold temperatures too, you tend to get a lot of ice buildup on some furnaces. Depends how it was vented outside, right? good idea to check daily or even a couple times a day. Just monitor the ice buildup on your exhaust. If you’re getting excessive buildup, that’s a sign that maybe it’s not grading properly. So you’re supposed to have an angle grading back to your furnace. So the furnace can actually drain the condensation. Okay.
Common Furnace Issues and Causes
So you get condensation from a high efficiency furnace, usually vented out outside the wall. And yeah, excessive buildup of ice is a sign it wasn’t maybe done properly or there’s a problem, right? So we need to look at that. Another thing, too, is people like to put rodent screens into their intake. M that’s really a no no because that basically gets frosted up and it stops your furnace from being able to get the combustion air it needs to burn. That’s a problem.
So these are important things to look at, you know, and I’ve been running through them. Another one, if it wasn’t your furnace wasn’t vented properly and the exhaust is actually getting sucked into the intake in cold weather, that exhaust hangs a little lower and it stays around the house longer and so you don’t want that sucking it up. So monitor what’s happening. If there’s an issue, you can give us a call. We can rectify the situation for you. So that’s a major one.
Well, let’s talk a little bit about that. So if either of those things is true, if either you’re getting a lot of condensate buildup or air is getting sucked back in or the exhaust is being sucked back in, like what is the what is the problem with those? What’s going to happen to your furnace in the event that those things are true?
So it’s not going to ignite, right? If you’re if there’s no air to burn, it’s not going to light or stay lit is the biggest problem. We had a hot water tank yesterday. The issue was there was a screen in there. It was iced like iced right over and when we were looking inside the burner compartment when it would turn on, you could feel and hear the vacuum. It was trying to suck air through the cabinet. It does the same thing in a furnace. It needs that air actually quite a bit of air to burn. It’s important that it’s clear.
And, you know, simple fixes like we can extend the venting, turn it a different direction, make sure you got the proper grade. Like, yeah, we can get it rectified. Sometimes it’s the wind. You might be vented properly, but needs to be done differently because your headwind is coming in that direction, blowing it directly to your intake, that type of thing.
Oh, so there are a number of different things. So check on your intakes and exhaust on your high efficiency furnace. Make sure that your furnace filters are clear and you know to replace them. Good time to replace them.
Preparation and Preventative Maintenance
What else is something that people can do preparing for the freezing cold temperatures that we get here in Edmonton and Sherwood Park?
So I’m always a big fan of backup heat. You need some type of backup heat. Some people are lucky enough to have two furnaces. One can take the load while you’re getting the other one repaired if there’s an emergency. Fireplaces are great. Everybody’s got an oven, you know, in an emergency, you can use your oven for added heat and space heaters are nice to have. Mhm.
Like in our climate, having no backup heat isn’t a great idea. No, it’s not not a great idea at all. And it’s tough because some suppliers aren’t open in the middle of the night. So sometimes it might be difficult to get the part you need in the middle of the night, right? So you might have to wait till the next day anyways. So having a backup plan will save you money on labor costs, paying to open up the shop in the middle of the night, and just give you a little bit of sec a better secure feeling that if something happens, you’re you’re covered, right?
Yeah. Because all you really have to worry about is, you know, the time from when you usually go to bed to getting up in the morning and when things are starting to open up, like the suppliers opening up, the HVAC companies are open. His brother is ready to go. and you’re not paying those extra fees like you said for the supplier to open up their doors cuz they got to call somebody, get somebody into the store, unlock it, get your part for you. And that and there’s a cost to that as well as your guys have to come after hours or outside of normal working hours and there’s a premium on that as well. Right.
There is. Right. It just trickles down and so the better you can be prepared. The other thing is you want to check your thermostats. Make sure they don’t need new batteries. Everything’s working properly. It’s responding. humidifiers in this extreme cold. You want to turn those down maybe 30-35%. you’re going to start getting excessive condensation on the windows when it’s really cold out. you want to turn those down a bit. Like, if you haven’t had a service done in a long time, it’s a good idea to get a service done.
Things simple like uh flame sensors and that need to be cleaned just to make sure you’re having a proper burn in the furnace. It stays lit. If your classic sign is if your furnace is turning on and off, on and off, on and off, the flame sensor needs to be cleaned and potentially other service as well. Okay. When should they book a furnace service?
If it hasn’t been done, right away. But typically, uh, it’s good to get your furnace looked at as soon as the weather starts coming down a bit. You know, September, October is a good time to have your furnace, you know, looked at. Another thing too, go to your furnace. go to the mechanical room. I always tell my customers it’s a good idea every as often as possible to make it a practice to drop into the old utility room, right? Yeah. Have a look. Are there any leaks anywhere? If you catch them soon, you can prevent major damages to your furnace. you want to get those taken care of right away. noises, odd noises. If you’re a classic in the cold weather is the inducer fan. in the top upper comp compartment of your furnace, when the inducer fan goes, it starts to make a bit of a vibration or rattles. If you hear that, chances are your inducer is going to fail here right away or soon, especially when it’s working really hard to try to keep the house warm. Mhm. Okay.
And if that’s the case, if they hear that noise, they should just give you a call right away. Yeah. And get somebody in there cuz Yeah. failure is imminent. And then if that happens, basically you’ve got no heat. Your furnace is not working, right? Yeah.
Repair vs Replacement and Final Advice
how do you know like so when you’re going into a customer’s home and you’re looking at the furnace, you know, they’re coming, they’re asking for a repair, when how do you decide whether it’s it’s better to just go ahead and replace the whole furnace as opposed to just doing a band-aid fix? So, I usually use the 20-year rule, I call it.
So, if you take the cost of a furnace over the next 20 years, say whatever, $6,000 or $7,000 divided by 20 years, that’s going to give you how much it’s worth. So, if your furnace is 15 years old, you may have 5 years left if you’re lucky, right?Let me just do the math on that quickly. May as well, while we’re at it. So, let’s just say it depends on the furnace you get. 7,000 divided by 20. So, about $350 a year.
So, if you have five years left, my rule of thumb, I’m either going to let the furnace go and chance that it’s going to last the next 5 years. So, am I going to do a $1,500 repair if there’s about $1,500 worth of life left in the furnace? To me, not really. I like to have a warranty. I like to have new equipment, right? If there’s an expensive repair, a blower motor at 15 years old or older or inducer fan, that type of thing, then it’s a really good time to look at getting a new furnace because the one thing we don’t get to see are the internals of the furnace.
Is the heat exchanger somewhat plugged? Is there some cracking happening? we can go and put $1,500 and then, you know, next year your heat exchanger is done, right? Then what [clears throat] I like to give people all the options, right? Sometimes it’s just not in you just can’t do it right now. You have to make the repair, but that’s your call. You just need the facts, right? Here’s the information, you make the decision what’s best for you. But, uh, I just want to make sure that you always have that, you know, so you’re making a decision based on facts.
No, that’s great. I think uh you know that’s a really good option for people you know if you if you can swing it it’s best always to to give that get the most warranty get the most time in life uh for the furnace so replace that thing if the the cost you know cost/benefit analysis you know is there right so like you said if you’ve got only 5 years left in a furnace are you going to spend that $1500 to $2,000 on a repair or just start fresh brand new 20 year uh life cycle with $7,000 furnace, you get 10 year warranty, 12 on the higher end model. and that covers what? cover your labor and parts, right?
Heat exchangers typically have a 20-year warranty on them. they’re covered under warranty. You just have to keep in mind if your furnace has been overheating for any period of time. Sure, you might change out your heat exchanger, but what’s the condition of the other: the blower motor, the inducer, the control board, the switches, the sensors, all these types of things, they add up. Like if you were to replace all the parts in your furnace, you’re looking at three times the cost, you know, typically two to three times the cost of the furnace replacement if you replace all the parts, right?
So usually caution people with things like this right now this is this problem but we can’t control you know other weak con components in the system might show their face later when they’re working hard this winter. Right. Right. Yeah that makes sense because let’s say you get a replacement for your furnace right and you’ve got a warranty on the blow motor inducer control board all the things inside. If somebody does even just one of those parts, you’re paying for the part, you’re paying for the labor, you’re paying for all of that included. That’s kind of a big deal. That’s a big expense.
And, you know, it seems to me like the cost/benefit analysis on it would be better to have a new furnace in a lot of cases, right? let’s say someone is you know, they just had a new furnace and the company that installed it isn’t around anymore or for whatever reason can’t make it out. Can you guys come out and perform a service or warranty work on that furnace? We can get it as long as the equipment is still under warranty. One thing we always make sure we do when we put a new furnace in is we register the equipment. that’ll get you the 10 years that they promise you, right? if Lennux says you get a 10-year warranty, you get that 10-year warranty, but you need to register the equipment, right? it’s important that it’s done.
we can’t cover the labor because we didn’t make any profit on that job. So, we have no way to offset it. Whereas if we put the furnace in, we cover the warranty for that period. We match the parts. warranty is with our labor.
Nice. And then you get reimbursed from Linux or whoever’s providing that. Yeah, we use the serial number on the equipment. We submit it to whichever supplier it is and uh they just give us the components.
Is there anything that I miss or something we didn’t talk about regarding emergency furnace repairs in Shurid Park? When you have an emergency call, it’s a good idea to get down to the equipment and have a look at what’s happening. So, usually depending on the equipment, they’ll have an LED system like a light that’ll tell you what the error code is. So, that’ll help give us an idea of what might be happening before we get there.
So, it’s always nice to understand that. Or if it’s something really obvious like say your inducer fan goes, if you’re able to take the cover off the furnace and get us a serial number, model number, we could always get the component needed and bring it back. Bring it with us when we come. Save you some time, right? Get it all done in one service.
You just have to be able to open up the furnace, have a look. Usually the serial number, model number is somewhere on the back of the door or inside the metal cabinet of the furnace, like on the side walls somewhere, usually deep where it’s hard to find, where it’s hard to see. Yeah. [laughter]
But if you can get a picture of it, that helps us a lot. And on the back of the door, there’s usually an error code listing. So if you get three flashes, it’ll be this code. Pressure switch, whatever. Seven flashes, pause, three flashes, failure to ignite. That’s a common one for not having enough combustion air or plugged condensate drain, that type of thing, right? So it’s nice to know the error codes. it might be something really quick you can check yourself right over the phone. If it’s just a blocked vent, you know, I always ask people to check that stuff because if I come out and clean the vent for you and have to charge you a full service fee, it’s not ideal. So, any way I can help, you know, if it’s something really minor, we’re pretty busy when it’s cold, so we want to go to the ones that we need to be at. Right. Right. For sure. Okay. Yeah.
That’s awesome. So, is there anything else that I might have missed? Off the top of my head, uh, not really sure, but, uh, we can talk about it again.
All right, sounds good. Thank you so much. All right, guys. Uh, if you have an emergency furnace situation or if you just need to get your furnace service because the cold weather is coming and you know you’re going to have to take a look at your furnace, call Adrian at Hinse Mechanical for all your furnace, HVAC, and plumbing needs. Thanks. We’ll see you next time.