Keep Your Indoor Air Fresh — 5 Key Reasons To Get Your HVAC System Inspected Before Spring
You’ve probably heard that a rolling stone gathers no moss — but a moving ceiling fan sure gathers a lot of dust.
The same is true of your vents, ducts, furnace, and air conditioning.
Spring is not quite in the air — yet — and that means you’ve still got a chance to get all that dust cleared out.
Of course, that’s not the only reason to get your HVAC systems inspected before spring, but if you’ve ever looked inside one of your ventilation ducts, you would know it’s an important one.
Here are 5 solid reasons to get an inspection, and maybe a cleaning, for your entire heating and cooling system before the winter is over:
1. Breath Fresh Air
Okay, I know I already mentioned the dust — but it still needs to be on the list, because it’s that important.
Everything that’s in your ducts is also in the air you’re breathing, and if it hasn’t had regular cleaning it can have serious negative effects on your health.
If you’re not sure whether or not it needs a good clean, take off a vent cover and give a quick wipe in there with a slightly damp cloth — just be prepared to get grossed out.
2. Ice Build-Up
Over the winter months, it’s extremely common to have ice start to build-up on the exterior vents for your furnace — and that can lead to serious problems down the road.
Worse, ice can also start to build-up on some of the exterior units of your HVAC system — and if it’s not dealt with it can lead to rust problems.
3. Condenser Drainage
Many people don’t think about how much moisture is in the air around us, and what that means for their furnace.
Your furnace is built to handle it — it has a little condenser that drains excess moisture away, but it’s not completely fool-proof.
The lines can easily get clogged if your furnace is not regularly maintained, and in the winter months, they can sometimes freeze.
An inspection will include checking and maintaining the condenser lines and making sure you don’t end up with a puddle on your floor.
The time to get your air conditioning checked is long before you need it — as in right now.
That will leave you lots of time to get it repaired, with no worries about melting from the heat because you didn’t know there was a problem until you needed it.
Ask your inspector to make sure they check for rust and also take a look at the concrete pad it sits on, to make sure it didn’t crack or sink during the cold months.
5. Efficiency Saves You Money
Heating your house is probably expensive — for many people, it can be one of their single largest bills during the winter.
While you can’t really avoid having to heat your house, you can make sure your furnace is running at peak efficiency, and that will save you a lot of cash in the long run.
The best time to do this is before the end of winter, and before the end of fall — or a couple of months before you need the furnace, and a couple of months before you switch over to air conditioning, or turn the furnace off.
In the long run, just like most major appliances, it’s much more efficient (not to mention cheaper) to get regular maintenance before something breaks, than to fix it once it’s already broken.
You’ll not only save yourself some money, but you’ll also improve the quality of the air you breath every day inside your house — and that’s incredibly important for your health.
You are what you breath — so keep it clean.
