Choosing the Right Furnace Filters Can Save You Money

If you own a furnace then furnace filters should be something that you are familiar with. What you may not know is that the type of filters you choose for your furnace can save you money. One of the most popular choices for filters today are the disposable fiberglass type. This is due to the fact that they are easy to maintain since all you have to do each month is remove them, throw them out and replace them with brand new filters. While this process may be simple, it is also costly in the long term. Compare this to buying disposable plates to eat from. They are convenient as well but costly over time. If you want to save money then you need washable furnace filters.

Otherwise known as reusable furnace filters, washable filters can be reused many times before they ever have to be replaced. You simply remove them from the furnace each month, wash them off and dry them and return the filter to your furnace. As long as the filter is in good condition and not turn or otherwise damaged, it can be reused for a lengthy period of time. Not only do you save money by not having to constantly buy disposable filters, you also save money insomuch that washable furnace filters are much better built and do a better job protecting your furnace from particles and dust in the air.

In turn, this means that the furnace can run more efficiently, saving you money on your monthly utility bill. Furthermore, since reusable filters do a better job at protecting your furnace, you will avoid costly repairs and furnace part replacement that can result from the use of a poor quality filters in your furnace. In the worst case scenario, poor filters can cause such damage over time that they will ultimately shorten the life of your furnace and you will have to buy a new furnace sooner then you would have otherwise had to if you had used better quality filters.

Save Big Bucks by Maintaining Your Forced Air Furnace

Just like any other appliance, your forced air furnace requires regular maintenance to keep it running efficiently and problem-free. Taking steps as simple as replacing a dirty filter can save you thousands of dollars in repairs down the road.

With the cold weather approaching, spend a few minutes going through this check list for seasonal maintenance of your forced air furnace.

1. Set your thermostat at a comfortable level during your family's wake hours and leave it there rather than adjusting it up and down.

2. Invest in a programmable thermostat to automatically lower the temperature when everyone is asleep or away from home. If you have a heat pump in conjunction with your furnace, it is not advisable to continually adjust the temperature, but leave it at one constant setting.

3. During active use, check your filter monthly. Permanent filters need to be cleaned, and disposable filters replaced. It is advisable to set up a regular service schedule with a local professional to check your furnace at the beginning of the season and to explain how you can access your filter for regular inspection. They will give your furnace a seasonal cleaning, examine all the working parts, and make any necessary repairs.

4. Check all your heat supply registers to ensure they are open and unobstructed by furniture or other objects.

If you're a handy kind of person, you may want to venture further and perform some of this basic maintenance yourself:

1. TURN OFF THE POWER TO YOUR FURNACE!

2. There should be a door or panel to the blower unit - some models label it "Filter". Lift it off its hooks or unscrew it.

3. Slide out the filter and decide whether it needs to be cleaned. For disposable filters, take note of the model and size. Permanent filters should have instructions for cleaning. Remember, a clean filter can mean the difference between dollars spent on wasted fuel costs and possible repairs to your unit.

4. When replacing the filter, ensure it slides back evenly on the track and the arrow is facing the correct direction for proper airflow.

5. While the furnace door is open, take this time to vacuum the area and wiping off the fan blades.

6. Inspect the motor and pulleys for worn belts and replace any if necessary.

A well-maintained furnace should provide you with years of worry-free, energy efficient heating for your household.

A Wood Burning Furnace is a Viable Heating Alternative

Have you considered heating your home or cottage with a wood burning furnace? It is not a traditional method of heating a home but it can reduce your energy costs as opposed to heating with oil or gas. It is certainly a viable alternative in this day and age of high energy costs.

Using a wood burning furnace to heat your home allows you to use a renewable resource. It is also environmentally friendly to use these devices for heating.

When choosing a particular type of wood burning furnace, you have three different types from which to choose. You can find a stand-alone style along with a combination wood and electric furnace. Another style is the add-on type.

Another option for heating your home is the outdoor wood burning furnace. Most of the models available will heat an entire house along with heating the water as well. Not all the models are capable of doing this however. Determine what your needs are before making your purchase.

Once you have a wood burning furnace installed, you need to have a full winter's supply of firewood on hand. This can be costly if you plan to buy the wood. Other options include gathering your own wood. If you have a wood lot on your property, you can cut down any dead trees. If there was a storm during the summer that knocked down a tree, cut the wood up for your own use.

Scrap wood from lumberyards is also a good place to look for free wood. As you can see, you do not need to spend any money on wood if you are resourceful. Do not cut down any live trees, as this is not an environmentally friendly choice to make.

Any outlet that sells wood burning furnaces should be able to match you up with a unit that meets your needs. The unit you choose can add value to your home, so choose wisely.

Many heating and cooling supply stores will carry different models of the wood burning furnace. The big box do it yourself stores may also carry a supply. In addition, you can find many online stores that carry a large supply of these units.

Compare the prices of the units and compare the cost of installation before making your purchase. As you can see, there are a number of factors involved when it comes to finding the right wood burning furnace for your home or cottage.

Welcome Winter by Eliminating Excess Furnace Noise

The arrival of colder temperatures is evident everywhere you look-sweaters and scarves have replaced shorts and sandals, the colorful leaves of autumn are long gone from the trees, and breezy open windows have given way to the familiar roar of the home furnace. But for some, starting up the furnace on that first chilly night of the winter season brings a grim reminder of a problem that has been pleasantly absent over the past few months: a disturbingly loud furnace.

Furnace noise originates from several sources. A loud furnace motor can be a major nuisance, and is the sound source targeted in most furnace soundproofing projects. Airflow through ducts can also be a source of unwanted noise, particularly when components are old or otherwise in poor condition. Even with a furnace situated in a basement or remote mechanical room, unwanted noise can travel easily through walls, ceiling and openings and carry throughout the home.

Furnace rooms are usually surrounded at least partly by a system of ducts and pipes within the walls and ceiling of the room. At the inception of any furnace sound reduction endeavor, it is important to realize that the presence of such openings makes it impossible to completely eliminate the transmission of furnace noise into other parts of the home. Therefore, the goal in controlling furnace noise is to minimize unwanted sound transmission by isolating the furnace room from the rest of the home as much as possible. If your furnace is particularly loud, it may be a good idea to rule out any mechanical defects before implementing a sound reduction treatment. Performing preventative maintenance, if needed, is better than an emergency repair on a frigid day.

Fortunately, combating noise from a furnace can be accomplished inexpensively and with minimal effort. Controlling furnace noise involves containing noise within the furnace room, a task that can be approached in a couple of ways. One option for blocking the transmission of furnace noise is lining all wall surfaces with a heavyweight soundproofing membrane such as dB-Bloc, and establishing a disconnected surface by adding a layer of drywall onto a set of horizontal furring strips that have been attached atop the vinyl membrane. The added density coupled with the disconnected wall surface serves to collapse a majority of sound waves before they have the chance to enter adjoining rooms. An even simpler and more popular solution is to line walls with sound control blankets, which can be custom cut by a soundproofing supplier to match the dimensions needed for optimal sound control in your furnace room. Such blankets are a simple and cost effective solution, and can even be customized with openings to fit snugly around pipes and ductwork to optimize results. Such sound control blankets may also be affixed to a ceiling for added noise control.

An important aspect of sound reduction treatments aimed at decreasing unwanted furnace noise is ensuring that adequate protection is afforded for the application. An experienced soundproofing consultant and supplier can provide recommendations as to what treatments would be most effective based on the individual characteristics of your project.

Why You May Need a High Efficiency Gas Furnace

Purchasing a new furnace can be a tedious thing if you don't know much about them. Knowing some of the basics about furnaces, your home, and efficiency can make all the difference in the world actually. Let's start with the home. You need to know of course the size of your home so you know how much space will need to be heated. The other side of this coin is insulation. You should take a look through your home to see what type of insulation you have. The better your insulation the more likely the heat that is generated will stay inside (allowing you to only turn the furnace on for short periods of time to maintain the heated area, thus lowering your electric and gas bills depending on what type of furnace you get). High efficiency gas furnace units are always the better way to go because gas is much cheaper to use than electricity.

Once you've figured these two things out, your home's square footage (of the areas needing to be heated) and your insulation efficiency, then the next step is to do some research on high efficiency gas furnaces. Before we get into that I want to note that you can save money by replacing or appending your current insulation if it proves to be inefficient. It does little good to purchase a more powerful furnace if your insulation is poor, but it will cost less and save you money in the long and short run on bills if you simply tackle that issue first. You will be surprised how much money you will save on purchasing a smaller efficient furnace and putting the rest of the money into your insulation vs. just getting a more powerful unit (because the hot air will leave the home in scenario two, which is like throwing money out the window- or should I say, through the roof/walls?).

Once you've nailed these things, doing the research on your high efficiency gas furnace is a synch. Simply go online and do a search for furnaces. You will find sites that will show you what the best unit to buy for certain square footage are as well as sites describing in some detail what each unit does and why it's good for certain types of homes. You will also find many reviews by people who use them and are happy (or not so happy) with their unit. Be careful not to simply take every review to heart as some are not written by people who have the unit but rather sales sites that simply want you to buy THEIR furnace. Armed with all this information, which should take you about an hour to research, and print out some of it, you can now go searching for the furnace you decided on. You will know the lingo so when you call the various companies they won't think you're a newbie and try to sell you things you don't need.

Heat Exchanger Safety - A Maintained Furnace is a Safe Furnace

Heat exchangers are pieces of equipment that are used for the transfer of heat from one fluid to another. When a heat exchanger goes bad, chances are, important things stop working. When your automobile engine is overheating, it's likely that the heat exchanger is the problem. You probably call it a radiator, but it's one type of heat exchanger. In your radiator, antifreeze cools air that flows past it. This air is then blown by a fan onto the engine to keep it cool. If the radiator doesn't work properly, you won't be driving very far until the situation is fixed.

Your home heating system also has a heat exchanger. In fact, nearly every piece of mechanical equipment that has a need to intentionally heat or cool part of a system does. Inside your furnace there is a combustion chamber. There is a metal wall that separates the internal combustion from the air that flows past the heat exchanger and on through the ductwork to heat your home. You need this separation because you don't want the toxic gases inside mixing with the air that is distributed throughout your home. In the previous example, a faulty heat exchanger could lead to a broken down automobile, but in your home you could be gambling with your life.

Carbon Monoxide can be present in the combustion gases. It's supposed to be contained inside, but as time goes on, it becomes possible for the heat exchanger in your furnace to crack or warp. Each time your furnace turns on, the metal wall heats up and expands. During the off cycles, the metal of the heat exchanger cools and contracts. Over time this repeated process of expansion and contraction of the metal takes it's toll. The metal can become fatigued, and eventually warp out of shape, or just plain break.

As I noted before, these metal walls were designed to keep the toxic combustion gases inside the heat exchanger chamber. Guess what happens if there is a crack? That's right, the toxic gases inside can mix with the forced air that is being blown through the ductwork and into your home. Having a reliable Carbon Monoxide detector is an inexpensive measure to protect yourself and your family from the danger of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, but you can also take some proactive measures to protect against any potential danger.

Give your furnace an annual checkup, just before the heating season, to check the condition of the burners, the heat exchanger, the furnace filter, and other components that can affect the performance of your furnace. I recommend have a certified HVAC specialist do this. Only a certified specialist will have the knowledge and experience needed to know exactly what to look for, and where to look for it, as well as knowing what the operating specifications for your unit should be.

If your furnace is over 10 years old, it is even more important to keep that annual checkup. This is the time period where the years of wear and tear on your heat exchanger make a failure of the heat exchanger wall significantly more likely. Keeping your furnace in good health can also help keep you and your family in good health.

Oil Burner Maintenance Goes a Long Way

Oil burner are the lifeblood of any boiler or furnace. They are the hearts that make them beat. You have to take care of them for them to keep working. To many people neglect these vital machines until they go out and then cry to the heating technicians when they receive a gigantic bill for them coming out at 10 o'clock at night to fix a simple burner problem.

Follow this advice and problems with your oil burner will be minimal. The follow suggestions are for Beckett burners. Since they comprise of more than 90% of the marketplace I thought it would be foolish to talk about the other two major brands.

You want to filter the water out of your tank. Moisture can build up in those tanks faster than people think. Techs have drained tanks where in the first seconds nothing but water come out. Water corrodes the oil burner and messed up the nozzles which depends on a fine mist to work effectively. You may think you have a sealed container but all it takes is a little water over time to create a major problem. Making sure the fill cap and the vent cap are in place and tightly secure is one way to minimize this problem. You also want to clear ice, snow, and other debris that may collect on top of the tank. There are additives you can use to solve this problem and if you see water collects you can pop the water drain plug.

You want to get an annual tune up on your oil burner once a year. It should not cost more than a couple hundred bucks but heating professionals have the tools to scan any heating system and see if it is working properly. They can check the CO2 levels, wiring, and detect if anything is out of place. Things cost you less when you fix them before they break. Like a car some people wait til they are stranded on the street to call a mechanic while others are proactive and take care of a car problem well in advance. A certified boiler or furnace technician can analyze your whole system and tell you if your system is fine or if it could use some work. They also switch the oil nozzles, change the fuel and air filters, and adjust the controls. They also check the tank to make certain it does not contain any water.

If you follow these two suggestions you should have very little trouble with your oil burner. Beckett is the brand that most people have and they are known for making quality problems that last a long time. If you maintain your oil burner it will last a long time and keep your nice and toasty throughout the winter.