Your home’s furnace is a big part of your family’s comfort. It’s also a big part of the expense of maintaining and operating your home. Significant appliances like furnaces should last for many years, but they eventually exhaust their useful life like everything else. Here are five signs that you need a furnace replacement.
Higher Utility Bills
If your energy costs are steadily rising, you need to find out why. This could be because you’ve added appliances or started using more hot water, but if you see more cubic feet of gas or kilowatt-hours of electricity on your bill, an aging furnace is likely to blame. The cost of furnace repair to upgrade it for more efficiency will probably be high enough to replace the entire furnace.
Excessive Age
An older unit that is still working fine may still need furnace replacement. That’s because something will go wrong at some point, and you’ll need to call someone for furnace repair. If your contractor can’t find parts due to the unit’s age, you’ll be replacing it whether you wanted to or not. It’s much better to make the change during warm weather instead of waiting until a mid-winter breakdown to do it.
Frequent Replacement and Repairs
Even if parts are still available for your unit, there will come a time when you’re making so many calls for furnace repair that you’d be better off replacing the whole unit. Not only will this bring an end to worries about parts availability and cold-weather failures, but it will also get you a unit that is under warranty and much more energy-efficient.
Strange Noises and Odors
A good furnace repair technician can address most issues with your system, but sometimes there is no fix for “old and worn out.” In their last months of operation, furnaces typically have so many parts on the brink of failure that they combine to make a variety of noises that can’t be pinned down to any one source. Consider yourself lucky that your system sounds the alarm and tells you to replace it before it shuts down some cold winter night!
Uneven Temperatures in the Home
If you find some rooms are colder than usual while others are close to the expected temperature, your system may need more than furnace replacement. It may no longer generate enough heat to serve the entire home, or it may be failing to develop the necessary fan power to push the heat throughout the house. This suggests some severe problems that are best addressed with a new system.
It feels better to talk about furnace repair than furnace replacement, but your system will eventually reach a point when it needs to go. Keep an eye out for the kinds of serious problems that will make a new furnace the best investment for the long term. Your home will be more comfortable, your energy bills will be lower, and you’ll have greater peace of mind.