Serving the Communities of North Central Florida since 1998
Nothing lasts forever, and the same goes for the furnace in your house. Sure, it won’t see as much use in Florida as, say, in colder states like New York, Maine, or Rhode Island. Regardless, you still want to get the most out of your furnace even if it isn’t seeing much use.
In this article, we’ll go over how long you can expect your furnace to last, some issues that can shorten its lifespan, and when it’s time to get a new one.
Installing an electric furnace in Macclenny, FL is a good choice for home heating. Electric furnaces can handle the heating requirements of the mild Florida winters without much trouble, and they’re good for homes without a connection to a gas main.
We want to address something that’s often misunderstood about electric furnaces in this post, which is their energy efficiency, or specifically their energy efficiency rating. This can help you understand the benefits and disadvantages of using an electric furnace, as well as assist in the future when you’re making decisions about HVAC installations.
Heating a home in Florida during our mild winters is a bit of a juggling act. We don’t need our heating systems to run every day, through most of the day, as in a cold northern state where the weather is routinely below freezing. We’ll need our heaters on certain occasions and run them long enough to keep away the cool chill of days that are in the 50s. This makes it easy for a heater to get a house too hot and stuffy when it runs.
If you’re currently having trouble getting your house to the right balance of comfort on colder days because it always seems like rooms are getting uncomfortably warm, then you may need heating repair in Macclenny, FL. There are several possibilities for why you’re having this stuffy, overheated house problem.
Before we go further in this post, we want to be clear: we are not recommending you attempt to repair your furnace on your own. There is a big difference between the troubleshooting steps outlined below and actually taking out tools and tinkering around inside your furnace. Anything more complicated than the steps we recommend is something to leave to a certified HVAC professional. Not only will the professional know how to accurately diagnose and repair the furnace, they’ll be able to do it safely. Amateur work of any kind on a furnace can lead to dangerous situations.
Now that we’ve got that cleared up—what can you do when your furnace isn’t working before you call us for heating repair in Alachua, FL?
When winters are freezing cold and having a heating system is a basic part of survival, the question of when to get a new heater is an urgent one that people tend to think about long before the blizzards strike. Obviously, we don’t have the same kind of problem here in North Central Florida, where our winters are mild. But in ways, this makes the question about whether to replace a heater or keep repairing it trickier. No matter how often you use your heater, at some point, you’ll need to retire it because continuing with repairs is more costly.
We’re going to look into the “heating replacement vs. heating repair” in Lacrosse, FL question. You don’t have to make the final decision alone—call us and we’ll give you the expert advice you need, as well as whatever service is best for your future heating.
The weather in Florida is often weird. And during the winter it becomes more unpredictable. Handling home heating in Lacrosse, FL and other parts of Northwest Florida can be tricky. You may not have to deal with bone-shaking cold in your house, but trying to manage the temperature swings of the winter can cause energy waste over the season.
We can help! Below we’ve outlined some best practices to make your heating as low-cost this winter as possible.
“Winter weather” is a relative term in North Central Florida. We won’t get hit with snowstorms or bone-chilling subzero temperatures. However, we often deal with rain and temperature swings that make it necessary for our homes to have working heating systems. November is the right time—deeper into fall—to make sure your residential heating system is able to do the job you expect from it. You don’t want to switch on your electric furnace for the first time in December only to discover you already need to schedule heating repair in Lake Butler, FL for it, after all.
Here’s what you can do to see that you have a heating system in good shape for the sometimes odd winter weather of Florida.
What’s the most common type of home heating system in the U.S.? The natural gas furnace by a wide margin. Gas furnaces produce large amounts of heat and can warm up a house faster than almost any other type of heater. The lower cost of natural gas makes them attractive as well.
Gas furnaces aren’t as common in Florida. Their heating power is often too intense for our mild winters, and the lower cost of natural gas often makes little difference when furnaces don’t run often. This makes electric furnaces a frequent alternative. For homeowners without any gas connection, electric furnaces may seem like the only central heating option. They’re not, but they’re still popular choices.
Once upon a time, the most common furnace for a house was a ghastly monstrosity known as an “octopus furnace.” It sat in the basement of the home, burned coal, and distributed heat by letting it rise through large pipes that crawled up through the house. Inefficient, unreliable, costly, dangerous.
Obviously, furnaces have come a long way since then. We don’t have old octopus furnaces around in Florida (we rarely have basements!), but the changes in furnace technology over only the last two decades are impressive. If you have an older furnace (15 years or more), we recommend looking into the new models with their superior efficiency.
The air filter for your HVAC system is a critical component for it to operate well. It isn’t there to clean your household air but to protect the interior of the cabinet from all the dust, lint, and other particles the blower fan draws in through the return air ducts.
Just as important as the job of the air filter is changing the filter regularly. The filter isn’t self-cleaning, so it has to be replaced with a new filter to prevent air blockage. Unfortunately, homeowners often forget to do this job, especially during the winter when the HVAC system won’t run as often in the mild Florida weather. But even during winter, regular filter changes are essential.
