The Importance of Home Furnace Maintenance | Tips From A Plumber Sherwood Park
Hey there. Welcome back to the Hinse Brothers Mechanical YouTube channel. I’m Trevor. And this is Adrian Hinse. He’s one of the brothers who is part of the Hinse Brothers. And today we’re gonna be talking about the importance of furnace maintenance. We always start off our videos with a quote, and this one’s from Benjamin Franklin. It’s one of my personal favorites. Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn. Quick fact. Thank you for writing this down.
Proper insulation for a home or building on its own can improve HVAC efficiencies by up to 30%. Yeah. So you’ve been in this business for a little while. Tell me a little bit about furnace maintenance, sir. So, furnace maintenance is actually oftentimes not put high up on the priority priority list. So oftentimes people just, just run it, not think about it.
You don’t have to, you just adjust the thermostat to where you need it. And, and that’s all it it comes down to. But it’s actually, when it comes down to safety, having an annual inspection, at least on your furnace and HVAC system is very important for safety. All right. Well, let’s dig into these questions. I know if, if like most people, well, I’m maybe not like most people. I do change my furnace filter every now and then, but I think most people just leave it down there and whatever happens, happens. Yeah.
So number one, first question that, that we’ve got for you is, how often should a furnace be inspected?
So, annually is about, is about right for doing a proper inspection. When we’re doing this inspection, we want to basically look for anything obvious or potential issues that could erupt when the cold spells are on us, because that’s when our furnace is working the hardest.
And that’s when these problems are gonna happen, you know? Gotcha. Minus 40 Christmas holidays on the weekend or at night. We wanna avoid this, obviously. Right, always never fails. Now here’s a problem that some people have what can be causing the low air circulation throughout the home? So one of the main causes for low circulation could be your furnace filter being plugged.
So that restricts your furnace your, your air flow. Another thing too is if you have an air conditioner, there’s an evaporator coil above your furnace and it’s, it’s got fins on it. If that gets kicked with dust or lint or this type of thing, it’s gonna be plugged as well and, and cause an issue with your airflow. Gotcha. So I recommend every two years get your ducts cleaned and make sure you get that evaporator cleaned at the same time. Okay. So you talked about clogged filters before.
So what is the main cause of like a clogged filter?
If you have a lot of pets just basically dust from outside. So you have a fresh air inlet into your home and that’s collecting fresh air from outside. You’ve got pollen, you’ve got dust, you’ve got all sorts of different things and lint from your dryer even. Right? Right. These types of things build up on your filter and need to be replaced regularly, basically on like a three month, at least three months intervals. And then just keep an eye on it. ’cause Some homes collect more than others.
Okay. Now when you’re looking for the inspection, what are you looking for when you inspect the flue and the combustion piping? So we’re looking for any kind of damages to the exhaust.
So if it’s an older furnace, you’re gonna have like a metal chimney. We’re looking for any corrosion, rust signs of leakage, that type of thing. Yeah. Where we’re going to test it for carbon monoxide leakage. Yeah. Make sure there’s nothing there. If you have a high efficiency furnace, you’re gonna have PVC piping or plastic piping for your venting.
Yep. We’re gonna look for any kind of sags or back grading to make sure that the condensate that happens inside that piping makes its way back to the furnace and gets down the drain. Okay. And we also check for leaks at all the joints and that making sure there’s no carbon monoxide leakage happening in the home. Okay. And how do you test for that? So we’ve got a special, like a highly sensitive carbon monoxide detector. Okay. So these are not to be confused with like a regular carbon monoxide monitor.
These actually take an accurate reading instantly. Whereas carbon monoxide detectors in your home or monitors in your home actually will only go off if there’s been an extended exposure at higher amounts or higher concentrations. So it’s not going to catch the smaller leaks of carbon monoxide, which are actually harmful over time. Right. So the carbon monoxide monitor doesn’t actually protect you from the health risks involved with like lower concentration of carbon monoxide.
Okay. Good to know. I did not know that. That’s, that’s new information for me. So let’s get into the inside of the furnace and talk about the exhaust fan motor. So what happens when that fails? So when your exhaust fan motor fails it’s actually not allowing your furnace to combust anymore. There’s a sensor in there. It’s not going to push the harmful gases outta your furnace.
Okay. So there’s actually a safety switch in your furnace that tells the furnace not to run unless you’re actually having that draft of air pushing through the exhaust pipes. Okay. Now let’s talk about the a heat rise test.
What the heck is a heat rise test?
And and how do you do them and why do you do them? So the reason why we wanna do a heat rise test, we do that on new installations and we also do that on inspections, is that we want to make sure the temperature of the air going into the furnace is within a certain specification, manufacturer specification when it’s being heated and coming outta the furnace. So if you have a furnace that’s too large for your home, it’s going to be overheating. Okay. And overheating has a lot of other problems. So it’s going to damage the other internal components.
Your motors, like both your combustion motor, your blower motor, your control board, all these types of things get excessive stress, including your heat exchanger, which could cause premature damage to your heat exchanger as well. Okay. And that’s never a good thing. Basically gotta replace your, your furnace after that.
That’s right. If it’s overheated for too long, it’s gonna cause a lot of damage. Yeah. Not so good. So it’s good that you guys do that test. If you haven’t gotten your furnace looked at in a while, definitely give these guys a call. I got the number right down here so you can definitely give them a phone call and get that furnace checked out. Now talking about furnaces and talking about Murphy’s Law, why does it always seem that furnaces die on the coldest day of the year in the middle of winter at the most inconvenient time, often there’s an existing issue that we can catch early on in the year.
If we do an inspection, one of the most common would be you get a vibration. The bearings are going on a motor. And once they’re not running that often when it’s not that cold outside now when it’s super cold, that furnace is gonna be running almost nonstop. And that’s when things are gonna break down. Yeah. Right. That’s why it happens folks.
So get it checked out, get it dealt with before it’s the middle of the night, you have to pay extra to have someone come out and take a look at it. So other issues that were are pretty common are, you know, someone will accidentally, maybe you don’t have the thermostat set properly. Yeah. Maybe it’s not on the heating mode or it’s not, has something to do with the schedule. Or another one is someone accidentally flipped the switch off to the furnace in the mechanical room.
You gotta check that check to make sure your filters are clean because if your filter isn’t clean, it’s going to basically overheat your furnace. It’s not gonna be able to run properly. Other thing is motors might have failed. Your condensate drain may be plugged. So basically if, if there’s water backing up into your furnace, there’s a pressure switch in there that’s not gonna allow your inducer fan to work. There you go. And then your furnace won’t ignite.
So these are some of the main types of issues. And other ones your, it could be electrical or your heat exchanger. If your heat exchanger’s not if it’s leaking or there’s an issue there or dirty, it’s not gonna allow your furnace to work properly either. Right. So a lot of different things that you look at and, and you go through this when you do your furnace inspections.
Right? That’s right. So it’s really important. I mean, and it doesn’t really cost that much money for them to come out and do that. So it’s good to, for that peace of mind. Right. now let’s, let’s talk about, go back to the carbon monoxide issue. So let’s talk about the importance of ensuring that the system is not leaking any carbon monoxide. Yeah. So I kind of dove into that a little bit earlier about carbon monoxide, also known as the silent killer. Yeah.
One of the most important reasons we’re doing this inspection is to make sure that you don’t have any leaks or we catch them early on so that they don’t turn into a major leak. You know another question actually from a lot of home inspectors Yeah. Is they’ll say to people, you know, you’ve got a carbon monoxide leak coming from your furnace.
And the the first question is, I have carbon monoxide detectors and I’m not, I’m not dead yet. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So what’s, what’s the big deal? And it’s not, it’s not somebody trying to tell you you have a problem, you don’t have, it’s, you have the start of a really bad, dangerous problem Gotcha. And that it needs to be addressed right away. Okay. we can catch these at very small concentrations. So we’re gonna check the air coming outta your furnace.
We’re gonna check around the furnace, all your exhaust piping. We’re gonna look for these leaks to make sure that we detect the, even the small amounts before they turn into a major problem. Okay. No, that’s good. Good to have that peace of mind. ’cause Yeah, you can’t tell when there’s, you know, carbon monoxide leaking unless it’s like a really, really big concentration like you mentioned earlier.
So, it’s going to get that taken care of ahead of time. So now let’s talk about the, the, the overall thing When it comes to replacing your furnace, how do you know when it’s, you know, when it’s time just to, you know, put that old one to rest and get a new one? Basically, my rule of thumb is once warranty’s over, you get a 10 year warranty with our furnaces, you get 10 year parts and labor on, on a furnace. Right.
And you’ve got pretty, you’re pretty confident that you’re going to be taken care of in the winter time with this. Once you start having breakdowns after the warranty’s up, obviously you have to evaluate what’s my furnace worth Now, you know, maybe it’s worth a third of the value. It was at brand new. Okay, if I start making major repairs, those can cost, you know, anywhere from a thousand dollars, $1,500 to do a repair.
Is it worth it to replace that furnace or is it worth it to make that repair? Right. And we’re gonna go over options with you and kind of help you make the decision that is best for you and Right. We really don’t want to replace an expensive component when there’s other issues going on with it. Right? We wanna make sure that you get a fix and it lasts. Yeah.
Without having to constantly every year two, thinking you to death. Right? Yeah. So if it’s nickel and dimming you time to to go for it and get that new furnace because, you know, you think if you get a 10 year warranty out of it. So just break out the cost of that furnace over 10 years. How much is it per day? It’s like, not very much. Right? cup of coffee a day kind of thing.
So if you are in that situation, you’re not sure if you should get your furnace replaced, get in touch with Adrian and the guys at Hinse Brothers Mechanical and they’ll be able to, to give you a proper assessment. And if at all, all it needs is a little bit of a tuneup, a little bit of maintenance, and they can help you with that as well. So that’s it for us today. Thank you so much for joining us on this video. We have some more great topics coming up, so stay tuned to the channel. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. Thanks so much. We’ll catch you next time. Thanks very much.