Taking care of your home’s heating system to prepare it for winter is an essential step to take during the fall. However, your air conditioner requires some attention at this time as well. If you have a standard split-system AC (i.e. it has both indoor and outdoor components), it’s important to follow a few steps to “winterize” the air conditioner over the long months of cold when it won’t be running. This will help ensure its best operation when it starts up next year. These steps will protect the unit from snow as well as from rust.
Red Rock Mechanical, LLC Blog
The Dangers of a Cracked Heat Exchanger in a Furnace
November 21st, 2016
Are you one of the many people who use a natural gas furnace to provide heat for the winter? If so, then you probably understand why they’re so popular for home comfort: gas furnaces are dependable and provide a level of heating that few other systems can top—and that’s especially important in our part of the country, when it gets cold.
You need to take some special precautions with gas furnaces, however. They aren’t automatically dangerous—they’re built with safety uppermost in mind—but they may run into some troubles that might lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. (Always have CO detectors in your home if you use natural gas.) Perhaps the most worrying problem is a cracked heat exchanger, which we’re going to look at now.
Fixing Pinhole Leaks: Examples of How We Do It
November 14th, 2016
Among common plumbing issues that we take care of in our day-to-day work, pinhole leaks in copper pipes are among the most frequent. Copper pipes are corrosion-resistant, but there’s a special type of corrosion, pitted corrosion, that can affect them. This corrosion comes from chemicals often found in water and is difficult to prevent. When small pinhole leaks start up, however, they aren’t difficult for professional plumbers to fix. We’ll take you on a little tour of some of the ways that we solve these plumbing aggravations.
How to Catch Furnace Repair Problems Early
November 7th, 2016
When temperatures plummet in the middle of winter, the last thing you want to happen is for your gas furnace to suddenly quit working. Although you can call for emergency repairs, you’re still in for an uncomfortable wait… especially if many other homeowners are experiencing the same problem. The best strategy when it comes to repairing a furnace is to have the repairs done as soon as you notice anything wrong with the furnace, even if it’s minor. A furnace rarely suffers a complete breakdown without some warning. We’ve put together some specific warnings to watch for during the late fall when your furnace starts to run regularly.
Reasons to Schedule Professional Duct Cleaning
October 31st, 2016
The ducts that make up a home’s ventilation system pick up dust, lint, dander, and various other particles over time. After a year, a thin layer of debris will already be clinging to the ductwork walls. After a few more years, this build-up can be substantial enough that it will have a negative effect on the performance of the heating and cooling system. Getting rid of this accumulation in the ducts requires professionals with special equipment.
You might think that duct cleaning isn’t that important, but there are a number of benefits to having it done every few years:
Is It Time to Replace Your Water Heater?
October 23rd, 2016
A water heater is a necessity for any home, and it works all throughout the year no matter the weather. Think about how often you need hot water in your home on a daily basis and you’ll start to understand how much stress your water heater goes through.
This is why you need to give serious consideration to replacing your water heater after enough years have gone by and the system is showing signs that it’s starting to lag. Below we’re going to look a bit more at the age of a water heater and the warnings that it’s time to replace it.
Winterize Your Hose Bibs before the Cold Hits
October 17th, 2016
The biggest step toward preparing your home for another chilly winter in Vermont is to arrange for heating maintenance from a skilled technician. But your plumbing requires some attention as well to help avoid issues from frozen pipes. There are a few parts of your plumbing that are exposed to the outside, and if these freeze over it can mean expensive damage.
In this post, we’re going to look at what you can do to winterize the most exposed part of a home’s plumbing: the outside hose bibs.
Does Your Furnace Have a Repair Hangover from Last Winter?
October 10th, 2016
Here’s a situation that you don’t want to run into when the first chilly day of winter arrives: a furnace that breaks and stops working almost as soon as it turns on. You might think, “What’s the chance of that happening?” But if you let your heating end the previous winter with possible repair issues left unattended, you’re taking a big chance that it won’t work when you need it from the coming winter.
Take Your Furnace for a Test Run
October 3rd, 2016
Now that it’s October and we’re fully into the fall season, getting ready for the coming cold weather is a major priority. Have you already scheduled your annual heating maintenance with our professionals? If you haven’t, contact us and have it arranged as soon as possible. If you think that you may need a new furnace, as we talked about last week, you should also make arrangements with us right away.
To Replace or Not to Replace? That Is the Annual Furnace Question
September 26th, 2016
This is a topic we bring up at the start of each fall, because it’s important for homeowners to keep tabs on the furnaces that heat their homes through the winter. Each fall, you need to ask if your furnace will make it through the next winter in good shape, performing at high energy efficiency levels, and without safety concerns. Eventually, you will need to have the furnace replaced—no mechanical device can last forever—and maybe this is the year to schedule the replacement job with our HVAC professionals.
