One of the most important facts you need to know about your home’s gas furnace is when to have it replaced. No powerful appliance like a furnace can last forever and, considering our extreme winter weather, it’s amazing most furnaces last for as long as they do. At a certain point, you’ll need to make the choice to stop arranging for furnace repair in Burlington, VT and instead invest in getting a new furnace installed. This is a big step, one you won’t want to take lightly. We can help you to make the choice, and we’ll start with this post.
This isn’t an exhaustive list of signs your furnace is retirement-ready, but it’ll help you get an idea of when to call us for a professional opinion.
1. The age of the furnace
The age of a gas furnace is a good barometer of how much longer you can expect it to work. Although not an absolute, the manufacturer’s estimated service life for a furnace is often quite accurate for when a furnace is going to start to go into decline. For gas furnaces, 15 years is the usual upper-end estimate, although sometimes they can go for 20 years. We don’t recommend attempting to push a furnace past 15 years, especially if it is showing other signs of deterioration.
2. Poor indoor air quality
Your furnace has an impact on the air quality of your house, often in ways you may not realize. As a furnace ages, it will start to collect more and more dust and dirt, even with regular filter changes, and you’ll begin to see more dust in the house and feel it in the air.
3. Rising energy costs
When you keep up with regular maintenance for the furnace each spring, it will retain 95% of its original efficiency rating until the last one to two years of its life. This means you shouldn’t see a significant increase in your costs to run the furnace … until it’s time to replace it. When bills start to rise and you can’t tell why, the furnace may be signaling that it’s in its last year.
4. Repairs are common and costly
How often is “too often” when it comes to furnace repairs? Every year or more than once every year is too often. When you have to put this much money into keeping an older furnace running, you’re wasting money that’s better invested in a new furnace. Any repair that costs more than half of getting a replacement furnace is also too expensive.
5. Recent safety problems
If you have an older furnace that has caused the carbon monoxide detectors to go off in your house, we don’t recommend trying to repair it. This is a major warning of a furnace that you can’t trust unless you have prohibitively expensive repairs done to it. A new furnace is a fresh and safe start.
6. Uneven heating
When a furnace unevenly heats a home, it’s one of the strongest signs the system is in a final decline. Cold spots around the house show the furnace is losing its general heating capacity and probably won’t work effectively for much longer.
Red Rock Mechanical, LLC serves Northwest Vermont and Northeast New York. Schedule service with us if you think you need a new furnace.
