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No matter how high-tech or expensive your HVAC units are, you will not achieve the results you want unless you are helping them with good habits. With winter steadily approaching, we want to give you some home heating tips that can prepare your furnace to handle any kind of cold weather cost-effectively. Here are our tips to prepare your furnace for winter before it starts!
Weatherproof Your Home
One of the best ways to increase the efficiency of your furnace is to ensure that it only spends energy heating your home. Unfortunately, many homeowners do a poor job of sealing their homes and keeping heat inside. If you can’t keep heat in, you are wasting energy heating up the outside world and that is a losing battle.
The biggest areas of concern are the drafty areas of your home. Typically, doors and windows are the draftiest parts of the house, but you could also have problems throughout your home so make sure you don’t ignore a draft when you feel one.
Luckily, weatherstripping is a simple, cheap, and effective way to seal these problem areas. Additionally, you have plenty of options when it comes to weatherstripping so you can decide what the best choice is for you and your home. For doors, the typical choice is to slide foam padding to seal drafts from both sides. For your windows, creating a better seal when your windows are closed is vital. This can be done through tools like weatherstripping tape, but there are a variety of options so do some research and decide what will be best for you.
Seal Your Windows
Speaking of windows, you can actually lose a lot of heat from the glass itself. Unlike a wooden door, glass isn’t the best insulator. You may want to consider ways to reinforce your windows to help them retain heat. The best, but also most expensive, way to do this is to replace your single pane windows with double or triple-paned ones. This preserves your windows and makes them just as well insulated as a wall or door. Remember this also has benefits in the summer when you are running your air conditioner all of the time!
If you want a cheaper and simpler option, insulation film can be applied directly to the surface of your window and provides an extra layer of insulation. Just be careful to apply it well because it’s easy to leave bubbles or bumps behind that can ruin the view!
Get a Tune-Up
While it is totally true that much of your heater’s performance relies on good home heating habits, there will still always be a mechanical element. It’s important to get your furnace inspected by HVAC pros who can tell you what’s going on with your system. We can catch mechanical problems before they worsen and catch dangerous problems like a carbon monoxide leak. Little things like this set you up for success so that your home heating habits are effective.
At the end of the day, it’s much better to learn if there is a problem with your furnace now rather than waiting for it to fail when you need it most in winter! This is why it’s so important to do the work now so you aren’t stressed about your furnace when you actually need it.
Turn to the Experts
If you’ve implemented all of these measures and you’re still not satisfied with your home heating, turn to the pros at Griffin Mechanical, LLC. We can inspect your HVAC infrastructure to pinpoint inefficiencies, such as leaky ductwork or faulty equipment. We’d love to help! To schedule your consultation, call (615) 502-3030 today or fill out a simple online contact form!