Furnaces are found in more homes than any other type of central heating system. Ironically, they’re also not well understood by the average homeowner, and that’s probably because they are so common; they’re easy to take for granted.
You don’t need to be a furnace expert to have a good working furnace—that’s why you have professionals like us to help with any furnace service or other heater repair in Burlington, VT you may require. In fact, only professionals with licenses to work on gas-powered heaters should ever handle service on a furnace.
But extra knowledge is always helpful, and homeowners often have questions about the furnace. Below are two of the most urgent people have—plus a bonus one that pops up as well.
If you’re asking this question, this is probably the first winter you’ve spent with a heat pump providing comfort for your home. You made a change in spring or winter to your HVAC system and replaced it with a heat pump. This is a great choice—heat pumps are able to deliver excellent cooling in hot weather and energy efficient heating in winter. Thanks to advances in heat pump technology, heat pumps operate in cold temperatures better than ever before.
You never want bad odors wafting through your house, but especially not during times when you have guests staying over. And one common source of unpleasant odors in your house is the garbage disposal. Although you should never be placing actual garbage down the garbage disposal (and every plumber wishes these devices had different, less misleading names), you can still end up with a disposal giving off a “garbage” smell.
You might love the winter season, but your plumbing isn’t as happy about it. One of the biggest threats to your plumbing arrives along with the cold weather and snow: freezing pipes. When pipes freeze solid, it not only blocks water flow, it threatens the pipes with bursting.
The cold is the biggest obstacle for comfort during winter—that’s why you have a powerful central heating system in your home. (If you don’t, call us right away and we’ll arrange to have one installed before the winter weather arrives.) But homeowners often ignore, or aren’t aware of, another winter comfort obstacle: dry conditions. Relative humidity during the winter often plunges below 30% because of all the moisture frozen from the air. When the air is this dry, it makes it harder to stay warm, even with a great heating system at work. And this isn’t the only problem dry air can inflict on you and your household during winter. 
We’re sorry to bring you the bad news, but drain clogs are problems that will affect homes at some point. There is no way to prevent every single possible source of clogs. For example, you may end up with clogged drains because of sewer line issues coming from the municipal system. There’s nothing you can do to stop that ahead of time! And sometimes accidents occur and an object gets tipped over into a drain, leading to stoppage.
“Short-cycling? What’s that?” We know it sounds like a strange circus act or a short-distance bicycling competition. But it’s a term for faulty behavior from a cooling system. If you hear your home’s AC starting and stopping multiple times over an hour, that’s short-cycling. This isn’t something you want to happen, since it spells trouble for your 
You may have heard about duct cleaning services and wondered if this is something you should invest in. If you’re hesitant, it may be because you’ve heard stories about air duct cleaning scams that don’t offer a service that’s worthwhile. Unfortunately, it’s true there are many disreputable companies who claim to provide duct cleaning services at cut-rate prices—and then deliver a “cleaning” that’s hardly better than nothing at all. Cut-rate indeed! These unreliable companies make money by scheduling numerous appointments in a day and only pretend to do any cleaning. It’s how they can charge those low rates.
The winter weather certainly hung around for a long time, didn’t it? Nobody likes to deal with snow that far into the year, but we’re finally hitting the warm weather stride here in June. If you haven’t arranged for a visit from one of our HVAC experts to give your air conditioner a pre-season tune-up and inspection, it’s definitely not too late! The hottest weather is ahead of us, and as long as you’ve got your AC in good condition with routine maintenance before it starts to put in the heavy work, you should be in great shape for the season. 
