Heating Worcester: How to Tell Your Furnace Needs Service

Unseasonably early cool nights have left some Worcester area residents unexpectedly shivering in their beds. “You never think about your heat until you need it,” said Lynda Martineau, a local mother of four. “But then the baby starts saying she’s cold, and you’re waiting for the furnace to kick on, and nothing! Then it’s all you can think about.” Colder weather is definitely in the forecast, and you don’t want to discover your heating system isn’t working the hard way. Having your furnace or home heating system serviced annually is a great idea. Additionally, you want to keep your ears and eyes open for these five common ‘red flag’ signs that something is wrong.

Uneven Temperatures Within Your Home

Is it toasty warm in your kitchen and chilly in your bedroom? Do you need to wear a sweater sitting in your living room, while your kids complain the bathroom’s too hot? Your home heating system should be delivering consistently comfortable heat throughout all of the zones in your home, all day long. Uneven temperatures create more than discomfort. For the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, it can be difficult to maintain a healthy body temperature, critical for optimum health. Fluctuations in the ambient temperature

Thump, Bump, Clunk, Kapow!

Failing furnaces are noisy furnaces. Under ideal circumstances, your home heating system should be operating quietly. Often, a system will have a few familiar knocks or rattles that the homeowner’s accustomed to hearing; flexing ductwork or noisy blower motors that merit no special attention. However, if you start hearing new noises, particularly coupled with any of the other signs on this list, it’s time to call your Worcester area heating repair professional.

The Furnace Never Stops Running!

If your home heating system is operating continually, you have a problem. Heating systems are designed to run intermittently; producing heat for a short period of time – until the space being warmed has reached the desired temperature – and then shutting off. The ‘rest period’ during which your furnace isn’t running helps you conserve fuel and energy. This time off also prolongs the useful life of your heating system. If your furnace isn’t shutting off, you’ll see your fuel use go through the roof – costing you a lot of extra money you didn’t need to spend.

Cool Air Being Forced Through Vents

Heating systems can fail in stages. For example, your furnace’s blower can be functioning perfectly, sending air careening through your Worcester area home’s ductwork – but if everything else isn’t working the way it’s supposed to, the air can be cool or even cold! The last thing you want on a chilly fall afternoon is cool air coming through the vents. The situation gets worse when it’s the middle of the winter – or more likely, the middle of the coldest night you’ve ever experienced. Changes in temperature are worth paying attention to as well: if your thermostat is set at 68 and the furnace that used to reliably warm it up now struggles to keep up, it’s time to call for service!

Utility and Fuel Bills Skyrocket

We’re all accustomed to seeing our energy bills constantly get higher and higher and higher. Home heating bills are particularly troublesome, as the price of home heating oil, kerosene, propane, and other common fuels is tied to events over which we have no control – politics, consumer demand, even distant hurricanes can raise the prices we pay. That being said, if you see your utility and fuel bills rise steeply, suddenly, for no identifiable reason, there may very well be a problem. If you can’t attribute the change to a change in your habits – such as running the heater more during a stretch of sub-zero weather – or to an external event, which your fuel company would normally inform you of, it’s a good idea to have your home heating system inspected to identify and remedy the problem.

Act Quickly!

If you suspect there’s problems with your Worcester area heating system, don’t delay. Call your Worcester area plumber or heating technician right away. Heating problems don’t get better on their own, and letting your home heating system run when it’s not operating properly can create larger issues – even fire! Your home is too important to put on the line!