This is definitely not a question you want to find yourself asking during a winter in Northwest Vermont! But if you do run into the situation of a furnace that simply isn’t doing what it’s supposed to, you’ll need to get to the bottom of it fast. In some cases, you can remedy the trouble on your own. Others will require you call on heating professionals.
Red Rock Mechanical, LLC Blog
Is Your Furnace Tripping the Circuit Breaker?
January 9th, 2017
Furnaces, if they receive annual maintenance in the fall, will run with few problems during each winter. However, repair problems can still crop up, and one of the more common ones is when the furnace causes a circuit breaker to trip. This will cause the furnace to stop working until the breaker is reset. Sometimes this will only happen once.
But if the furnace continues to trip the circuit breaker, there might be something wrong with the furnace or the electrical panel that will require professionals.
How to Tell You Need a New Garbage Disposal
January 2nd, 2017
If you’re used to working in a home kitchen with a garbage disposal in the sink, you wouldn’t want to have to go without it. Even a single day with no disposal will make you understand what an essential part of your daily life it is.
Unfortunately, people often ignore signs that their garbage disposal is coming to the end of its service life (usually 10 to 15 years). Below are a few of the indications that will tell you it’s time to call our expert plumbers and arrange to have a new disposal put in. It’s a good way to get your kitchen off to a fine start to the New Year!
Post-Holidays: A Good Time for Drain Cleaning!
December 27th, 2016
The holiday season is almost behind us. January is the month when we return to work and look ahead at the year and think of important chores that need to be done. January is a “clean-up and maintenance month.” One bit of house-cleaning that we recommend is drain cleaning.
You may not have thought about arranging for professional drain cleaning services before (no, pouring chemicals down the drains is not “drain cleaning”), but you’ll be impressed at what a difference it will make during the rest of the year.
Two Winter Heat Pump Problems—That Aren’t Really Problems
December 21st, 2016
Heat pumps have improved so much over the past decade that they are now practical in colder areas. Our winters are mighty chilly, but if you have the right heat pump installation from our experts, you can expect the system to make it through the season without trouble.
If this is your first winter using a heat pump, you might run into some behavior from it that will seem alarming. Actually, these odd-seeming occurrences are normal. If you know what to look for, you won’t need to panic and call for repairs.
Let’s Keep Your Heating an Energy-Saver through the Winter
December 12th, 2016
No question about it… winter has already arrived here in Vermont. It doesn’t matter that the actual start date of winter is December 21. Vermont’s winter snow doesn’t follow any timetable!
If you’ve already had heating maintenance done for your furnace or heat pump (make sure to do this every fall), then you are already off to a good start with a heating system that will work at the highest energy efficiency throughout the season. But there are more steps you can take now that the winter is here to see that the heater gives you the best value for your comfort until spring arrives:
How to Deal with Frozen Pipes in Winter
December 5th, 2016
This is a topic that we need to turn to ever year right as winter starts to close in because it’s one of the major threats that household plumbing faces when temperatures plunge below zero. Frozen pipes are bad news for a whole range of reasons, but the two most important are:
- Frozen pipes stop the flow of water
- Frozen pipes can lead to pipe bursting and potential flooding
What can you do about frozen pipes? Let’s look at the steps you can take:
Preparing Your Outdoor Air Conditioner for Winter
November 29th, 2016
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.
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.
