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Helping Your Heater Finish Strong This Winter

Although spring is on its way, cold winter temperatures may continue to prevail for a few more weeks to come. Throughout the winter, your furnace has provided your Detroit home with warm air to keep your family comfortable, regardless of the temperature outside. As the season finally draws to a close, there are a few ways in which you can help your furnace maintain high efficiency and continue to enjoy lower heating bills until the weather warms up.

Eliminate Drafts

Drafts are a sign of areas where cold air from outside is entering the interior of your home, which has a cooling effect on the air inside. This means your furnace must work harder to heat the air for comfort, causing excess strain on the system and costing you more in terms of fuel consumption. Eliminating drafts in your home isn’t difficult—begin by adding caulk or weatherstripping around doors and windows wherever you feel drafts or can see daylight through the frame. Additionally, check areas such as your basement, attic, or garage for drafts that may be entering through the holes in your home’s exterior meant to house cables or vents. Caulk or foam can be used in these areas to eliminate drafts and further boost your furnace’s performance as the season draws to a close.

Develop a Heating Program

A programmable thermostat has the potential to help you save money and prolong the lifetime of your furnace. However, while many homes in the United States have programmable thermostats, studies have shown that many homeowners aren’t getting the most from this technology. If you have a programmable thermostat but aren’t using its program feature, now is a great time to get to know this technology better. Consult your user’s manual or contact your heating and cooling company for the information you need to create a heating program suited to your needs. By limiting the amount of heating your furnace must do while you are sleeping or away and concentrating your furnace’s activity on only the hours you need it most, you can improve the efficiency with which your furnace heats your home to enjoy better heating at a lower cost.

Augment Heating with Ceiling Fans

If your home has ceiling fans, they’ve likely been sitting idle during the winter. However, ceiling fans can be used to augment the performance of your furnace simply by reversing the direction of their spin. This can often be done either via a switch on the fan itself, or by pressing a button on a remote fan system. Once you’ve reversed the direction of the fan, leave it running on a low setting. As the fan turns, it will pull cool air up from the floor, which forces heated air from your furnace—which tends to stay near the ceiling—down into the room, where you can feel it. This process has a natural warming effect, allowing you to get the most from your furnace and often allowing you to lower the temperature in your home by a degree or two without even noticing.

If you’re looking for ways to get the most from your heating system this winter, our HVAC technicians can help. We offer a variety of heating and cooling services throughout the Detroit area to help you keep your home comfortable all year long. Check us out on the web, or click through our blog to read more helpful HVAC articles.