The reason to have a central heating system like a furnace is to keep your house warm in the winter. A simple idea. But what happens when your furnace runs, but your home doesn’t feel warm enough?
If you find yourself starting to push up the thermostat setting higher than usual trying to get the normal amount of comfort, there’s probably something wrong with your furnace. It might be something basic, or it may be something that will require you to call us for heating repair in North Myrtle Beach, SC.
To help you out, we’ll look into some of the common causes for a furnace that won’t keep up.
The thermostat may actually be the problem.
Let’s start with the thermostat, the one you’ve been fiddling with trying to get the house warm. Sometimes, the thermostat is the source of the problem. A thermostat’s temperature sensor can become miscalibrated so it reads the house as cooler than it is, which would explain why you can’t get the house to the temperature you normally like.
The best remedy in this situation is to have professionals inspect and then recalibrate the thermostat so everything works like it used to.
You need to put in a clean furnace filter.
This is a frequent reason for a furnace to underperform. The furnace’s filter should be changed regularly, every 1-3 months. If it’s left in place for too long, it will become clogged and start restricting airflow into the furnace, which means less air that gets heated.
You can fix this yourself by putting in a clean filter. Follow a regular filter changing schedule and you won’t have to worry in the future.
The furnace is shutting off early.
You can hear your furnace turning on, the burners igniting, and the blower running. But does it shut off earlier than normal? A furnace’s standard heating cycle is at least 15 minutes. If your furnace only runs for 10 minutes or less at a time, then it’s short-cycling.
There are many different reasons it can start doing this: the furnace may be overheating, there might be faulty relays, or one of the safety mechanisms is malfunctioning and shutting the furnace off early. You’ll need to have professionals inspect the furnace to figure out what’s causing the problem and have it corrected.
The furnace is too small for your house.
Is this a new furnace you had installed before this winter? If so, then one possibility is that whoever installed the furnace didn’t go through the important step of sizing it to your house and then put in one that’s too small.
An undersized furnace simply can’t heat your house to your desired temperature. This happens often with amateur and inexperienced furnace installers: you always want licensed, experienced technicians on the job. The only solution is to have the furnace replaced with a correctly sized one.
The furnace is too old and is starting to fail.
If your furnace is more than 15 years old, then this trouble heating the house is likely an indication that the unit is failing. You don’t want to keep pushing a furnace this old. It’s better to have a new one put in that will not only fully heat the house, but which won’t cost as much to run.
Call on Martin Heat & Air when you have furnace troubles. We’re more than HVAC services; we give you peace of mind.