If one major home appliance could be considered absolutely essential here in the far north, it would have to be the furnace. Even during the spring months, your furnace is a necessary component to keeping your home safe and comfortable!
Here at Shipton’s Heating & Cooling, many of our residential HVAC customers still choose to do without air conditioning during the summer.
But not one single client is willing to forego having a reliable furnace in winter.
Is your furnace about to fail? Do you really want to spend our brief spring, summer and fall seasons worrying if your furnace can handle one more bitterly cold winter? Learn the furnace warning signs you need to start watching for this spring.
How Long Will a Furnace Last?
According to Energy Star, the typical furnace comes with about a 15 to 20-year life expectancy.
Do some furnaces fail before their 15th birthday? Absolutely. Can some furnaces last longer than 20 years? Sure they can.
But if your furnace is 14 years or older, it is definitely time to start planning and saving for a new furnace.
4 Major Warning Signs Your Furnace Is Dying
The choice between dealing with an emergency furnace outage or taking a proactive stance to replace your furnace is always in your hands.
But this is easy to forget in the midst of life’s hectic pace!
These four major warning signs of impending furnace failure should never be ignored. They will not resolve on their own through benign neglect.
So what should you do? We recommend scheduling your preventative maintenance service and requesting a free quote to purchase and install a new furnace at the same time.
1. Heating bills that creep up month after month.
Winter here in Ontario Canada is pretty reliable….reliably long and cold, that is.
So if your winter heating bills are rising, there are only two real culprits:
- Increasing power costs, or
- Decreasing furnace performance.
You can’t control what the power company decides to charge you. But you absolutely can control how much of that power you have to use to heat your home.
Energy Star states that a new furnace will be up to 15 percent more efficient right out of the box than an older unit.
According to the latest statistics from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, the typical homeowner spends around $2,128 per year on energy. Almost 62 percent of that, or $1,319, goes to home heating.
So a 15 percent efficiency boost puts almost $200 right back in your wallet!
2. Things that go bump in the night (and morning, and afternoon).
An older model furnace is never going to be as whisper quiet as a new unit.
But when your furnace starts announcing each new cycle with bangs, pops, whistles, grunts, clangs and moans, it is time to start thinking seriously about its replacement.
If you are not ready to replace your furnace yet, this is definitely the right time to enrol in a preventative furnace maintenance plan geared towards maintaining and servicing an older furnace unit.
However, it usually only takes a few emergency service calls (at a few hundred dollars or more a pop) before your mind will quite naturally start to turn to thoughts of replacement.
3. Chronic discomfort in your own home.
Now, this can be tricky because it is not always your furnace that is to blame for uneven heating in the home.
Sometimes, the air duct system is the true culprit. Sometimes, it is worn out or missing insulation or leaks or cracks in weatherstripping or sealing. At times it can even be a calibration problem within the furnace thermostat.
But once you’ve ruled out or repaired each of these possible causes, what you are left with is a faulty furnace that is underperforming at its job.
At this point, you face either replacing major parts at a major cost or choosing to invest in a full furnace upgrade. In most cases, the latter will be the most economical choice over the long run.
4. More sick days for you and your family.
An ageing furnace can present a legitimate health hazard for two key reasons:
- Off-gassing, and
- Particulate build-up.
Off-gassing is caused by incomplete combustion – the fuel is not burning completely and is emitting toxic by-products as a result. The most deadly of these is carbon monoxide, aka “the silent killer.”
Particulate build-up can include dust, dirt, soot, ash and other respiratory irritants that cause headache, brain fog, dry eyes, irritated skin, coughing, cold and flu-like symptoms and general fatigue.
The link between indoor air quality (or lack thereof) and health is now well established. But it has never been more concerning than it has been in the pandemic age we are living through right now.
Buy a Furnace And Get a FREE Air Conditioner
How much is a new furnace? If you buy it right now, we’ll give you a FREE air conditioner – making your furnace purchase 100% worth it!
Now and through the end of this month, purchase a qualifying furnace and we will give you a brand new (qualifying) air conditioner for free!
How is that for a deal you simply can’t refuse?
Many homeowners find out too late that mixing and matching their HVAC system voids the manufacturer’s warranty. With this deal, you upgrade to a fully compatible new system that will serve your needs for years to come.
Trust Shipton’s for Your Burlington, Oakville, Hamilton HVAC Needs
We love helping our customers in Hamilton, Ontario and surrounding areas get the best HVAC equipment for the most affordable price. We love it so much we’ve been doing it for nearly a century!
Our highly trained service technicians are here to serve all your furnace, air conditioning, hot water and indoor air quality needs.
If you’re looking for furnace repair or furnace maintenance, schedule your HVAC service visit here!
Give us a call at 1-905-549-4616 or visit us online to let us know how we can serve you best.
