KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Dan Heydon with Cates Heating and Cooling knows many of us have a blank looks on our faces when staring at our heating system.
“It’s like me looking at a car engine and going, 'Gee I don’t know what I’m looking at,” said Heydon.
He said there a good place to start when checking your heating system is looking at your pipes.
“If these are on outside walls, sometimes these are actually mounted in the wall itself, so paying attention to the water this time of year is probably widely important,” Heydon says.
Dan's colleague, Derek Larm, also says it’s important to make sure your unit's filters are replaced as temperatures drop.
“When your filter gets overrun with particle materials, whatever the temperature inside the furnace will climb past their designed temperatures," Larm said. "The heat exchanger expands really big and cracks."
Larm says two more steps in the checkup are getting a carbon monoxide detector and turning down thermostats when leaving the house.
“No more than five degrees,” Larm says. "Because if you get down 10, 12, 15 degrees, all the material in your home actually drops 15 degrees. So the carpet the flooring, the couches, the furniture and the material in the home actually absorbs the heat from the air and it cycles right back on and right back on again,”
It’s also important to remember to keep cabinets open so heat can make it’s way to the pipes.
In addition, close garage doors and keep the damper of your chimney closed to keep hot air in and cold air out.
