Comfort doesn’t come cheap, and the prices of utilities keep climbing. To get your money’s worth out of all your home appliances, it’s important to use them efficiently, utilizing their full potential. This goes for the furnace too.
Not using the right thermostat temperature, your house decor obstructing the hot airflow, and not properly insulating the windows are all common causes energy bills run high. Not only that, the furnace also has to work hard to maintain a consistent temperature around the house, which eventually leads to a low lifecycle for the furnace.
If you are here reading this article, it’s safe to assume that you are now looking for solutions to right all these wrongs. If so, as expert providers of furnace installation in NJ, we can help.
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Read on below to find out what you can do to make your furnace as energy-efficient as possible.
How to Make Your Furnace Run More Efficiently
The tips here include things you can do at home and some others where you might need to call in the pros, but by routinely keeping an eye on things, you can ensure that your furnace runs with high efficiency.
1. Get your furnace installed by a pro tech
Spend your time vetting the professionals you are considering for the job. Furnace installation, on average, costs between $3,000 to $7,000. It mostly depends on factors like the size of your house or the kind of furnace you are looking for. But if someone is quoting you a price that sounds too good, we suggest you keep your options open.
The trade-off for a cheap installation job may be something even costlier like poorly done work or the use of subpar materials, not to mention an increased potential of safety hazards.
So, only use professional installation services to ensure you get licenses professionals, with good work experience, and latest HVAC technology and equipment, to not only keep your house warm but safe from hazards, too.
2. Change filters regularly
The main job of the furnace filters is to keep the debris and the dust out. Overtime, if you don’t clean them, the accumulating dirt can clog them and affect the performance of your furnace.
Not many people know this but the most long-lasting furnace maintenance in NJ can easily be achieved by changing your filters regularly.
Twice a year, call in the pros to get your furnace filters cleaned and changed. It may seem like an expense but remember that regular maintenance costs much less than the repair of a broken down system.
3. Be quick with furnace repair
While most well-maintained furnaces will run smoothly for years without needing any serious repair work, parts may start to rust or leaks may appear that will need instant repairing.
Delaying repairs not only puts your already strained furnace through unnecessary stress, but may also release hazardous gasses or harmful leaks inside your home.
So, as soon as you see a rusty hole or feel any decline in your furnace’s performance, enlist an affordable furnace repair service to get your system checked and fixed.
4. Install an energy-efficient thermostat & lower the temperature
As HVAC experts, we are all too familiar with problems that arise due to constant thermostat adjustments. We even listed it as a specially bad HVAC habit in our recent article, and talked about how it affects your energy bills and brings your HVAC efficiency down.
So, while constant thermostat adjustment is a big no-no, bringing it down a degree or two lower can definitely bring you immense benefits.
Even one degree lower (but not too low) temperature setting improves the furnace efficiency remarkably. 68-70 is ideal. But you can even survive 64 if you choose to wear a light sweater and slippers.
To keep things simple, invest in a programmable thermostat so you can set different settings for different times of the day (or when you are on a holiday). A programmable thermostat will keep the temperature even in the house and run the furnace more efficiently, while you enjoy a comfortable home and a low energy bill.
5. Use a humidifier
The humidifier will work alongside your furnace by maintaining your indoor humidity levels. Ideally, the indoor humidity level should be between 40-60 percent. If you use a humidifier to keep the indoor level at 40%, for example, you can ensure a more even transfer of heat throughout the house.
By maintaining humidity levels, you maintain a warm indoor environment during cold weather without adjusting your thermostat.
An extra plus of using humidifiers: it decreases allergic reactions by making the indoor air less dry, and reduces the potential of asthma attacks.
6. Have your ductwork sealed
To optimize the use of the furnace, make sure all the ductwork is sealed inside your home. Even a tiny leak in the ducts can make you lose around 20% of the hot air. By sealing the ductwork, at seams and at joints, you can greatly improve the efficiency of your furnace.
But the problem is, most ductwork typically resides inside the finished walls of the house. So, how do you know where the leak is if you can’t see it?
This is a maintenance job where you need expert help. A trained HVAC technician will come with relevant tools to determine the location, size, and existence of the leak. If they spot the leak, they have the right equipment to treat it and fix it, without damaging the construction of your house.
If there is no leak, they will be able to tell you what other problem might be causing a low furnace performance so you can allocate your resources to where the issue is.
7. Insulate your house
While sealing the ductwork will ensure you do not lose any hot air as it travels from the furnace to the inside of your home, correct insulation techniques are necessary to then keep that hot air inside and not let any of it out.
This includes using heavy curtains over the windows, rugs to insulate the floor, sealing exterior doors and windows with expanding foam, and also weather-focused decorating.
Tapestries over the walls or large bookcases or artwork over them will further help with insulation.
If your house has south-facing windows, open them wide on sunny days to further improve the air flow and improve your furnace’s energy efficiency.
8. Remove obstructions and aid the airflow
Talking about air flow, it’s important to reiterate that it’s an extremely common cause that a well-functioning furnace isn’t able to keep the entirety of your home at an even temperature. Any obstruction in the airflow will affect the air cycle your furnace needs to perform well.
To aid that, keep your furnace registers clean from debris, and do not put large furniture in the path of the airflow. Also, open the doors of your rooms so freshly treated air can easily float through, keeping your furnace energy-efficient.
Is the furnace still not working right? Think about an upgrade
If you have applied all these maintenance and care tips and your furnace is still providing poor efficiency, you might have to consider an upgrade. It’s especially true if your current unit is more than 15 years old. Units that old already provide a maximum efficiency of 60-70%. Modern units, on the other hand, are hugely more efficient with nearly 99% efficiency levels.
So, in the long run, upgrading to a new system may actually prove more energy efficient than anything else.
Call AAC Heating and Cooling for affordable installation in NJ. Call this number 609-373-9707 to get a free estimate.