Proper HVAC maintenance is one of the biggest keys to keeping your home comfortable and preventing your energy bills from increasing. Even though the winters in Palm Springs are mild and fairly warm, it’s still important that your heating system works properly so that your house doesn’t get overly cold at night. Here, we’ll explore some of the most important steps when it comes to maintaining your HVAC system and ensuring your home is always comfortable throughout winter.
Clean Your Outdoor HVAC Unit
If you or any of your neighbors have deciduous trees that lose their leaves in the fall, you should make sure to clean up any dead leaves that are piled up around your outdoor HVAC unit or stuck to the sides of it. This step is especially important if you have a heat pump that you use to heat your home during the winter months. The reason is that leaves and other debris can restrict how much air can flow through the unit. That means the fan may not pull enough air into the unit, resulting in it not heating nearly as well as it’s supposed to. As a result, your heat pump will run more and your energy bills will be higher. If you have a standard AC, you should also take this step before you need to start running it.
If you see leaves stuck inside the outdoor unit, you should contact an HVAC company to have a technician clean the unit out to ensure it works effectively. The reason it’s necessary to have a technician do this for you is that you typically need to remove the fan motor and blades to access the inside of the unit. You could easily end up doing damage to the fan assembly if you don’t know what you’re doing. Another reason is that the technician can also clean the condenser coil at the same time, which will also greatly improve the performance of your heat pump or AC.
Get Your Heating System Serviced
Whether you have a heat pump, a gas furnace or an electric furnace, it’s crucial that you have an experienced professional service and inspect your heating system every winter. Any type of heating system will work much more effectively and use less energy if it’s professionally maintained every year.
Annual maintenance and inspections also help to avoid system breakdowns and reduce how often the system needs to be repaired. You’ll typically get at least a few more years of life out of your heating system if you make sure to have it serviced yearly as well.
One final reason annual maintenance is so important is that it ensures the manufacturer’s warranty on your heating unit remains valid. If the unit breaks down due to a defective component, you’ll usually need to provide annual maintenance records. This is so the manufacturer will honor the warranty and provide the replacement part at no cost. If you don’t have these records, you’ll often need to pay at least a few hundred dollars more to repair the unit and get it working again.
Replace or Clean Your HVAC System’s Air Filter
One thing you should do not just during the winter but throughout the year is regularly remove the air filter in your HVAC system and check to see how dirty it is. Ideally, this is something you should do monthly just to make sure you’re not running the system with a dirty filter. You typically only need to replace a disposable filter or wash a reusable filter every 60-90 days. Nonetheless, it’s still a good idea to check it more often since a dirty filter can greatly reduce your HVAC system’s performance and make it less energy efficient. If you have a furnace, there’s also a much higher chance it will overheat on occasion if the filter is dirty.
The two things to check when inspecting a disposable filter are how much dust, lint, hair and debris there is on its face and how dark it looks. If the filter is just covered in debris but hasn’t really started changing color yet, you can usually get about another month of life out of it. You can do this by gently wiping all of the debris off. Once the filter starts changing color and looking dark, it’s time to throw it out.
If you have a reusable filter, it may not really change colors depending on what type it is. Nonetheless, you definitely want to wash it whenever it starts getting coated with lots of debris. With a reusable filter, you also need to make sure to shut off your HVAC system while you’re washing the filter so that a bunch of debris doesn’t get inside the main part of the system. Also, you need to make sure you let the filter fully dry before putting it back in or else mold and mildew could start growing on it.
Make Sure No Vents or Registers Are Closed
Another thing you should do every so often throughout the year is go around your house and make sure that no one has closed any of the supply vents or registers. You also want to make sure that there’s no clothing, furniture or other items blocking any of them. One common myth many people believe is that you can make your HVAC system work more effectively by shutting the vents in some parts of the house.
The theory behind this is that it will allow the system to pump more air out into the other areas so that they get heated faster and stay warmer, which isn’t actually the case. Instead, closed vents and registers make it so that an HVAC system can’t perform as well. The energy efficiency of the system also decreases at least a bit whenever all of the vents aren’t open. The reason is that the system always puts out the same volume of air. Some of this air ends up getting trapped in certain parts of the home’s ductwork when some vents are closed. This build-up of air then causes the pressure and air resistance within the ducts to be much higher, which results in the blower struggling to move air throughout the house.
Check That Your Thermostat Is Registering the Correct Temperature
One issue that happens more often than many people realize is that the thermostat in a home no longer senses the temperature correctly. This often happens due to a build-up of dust inside the thermostat, and sometimes it can also happen just because someone bumped the thermostat. The other time this commonly occurs is when the thermostat is fairly old and starting to wear out. If your thermostat isn’t reading the temperature in your home properly, it can lead to your HVAC system either running more than necessary or not running as often as it should.
If you have an instant-read kitchen thermometer, you can easily use it to check the temperature of the air near the thermostat. If the temperature your thermostat shows is off by more than a degree or two, you should have a technician check the thermostat to see why it isn’t registering the temperature correctly. They may be able to just clean or recalibrate the thermostat, and they’ll also be able to easily determine if the thermostat is worn out and you need to replace it.
Contact Us Today
For 40 years, General Air Conditioning & Plumbing has been the company homeowners in Palm Springs and the Greater Coachella Valley have turned to whenever they need any HVAC, plumbing or electrical services. We service and maintain all types of HVAC units and can ensure your heating and air conditioning are energy efficient and function effectively. To get the best home services Palm Springs has to offer, contact us today.
