At the end of winter, we recommend you take a few moments to think about your furnace’s performance over the past season. If you have a relatively young furnace, you probably enjoyed consistent heating from it without any concerns. Older furnaces may start to encounter troubles, and it’s a good idea to consider if any of those troubles indicates a need for furnace service or even a new furnace installation in Indianapolis, IN. Planning is critical for ensuring you continue to receive the highest quality heating and energy efficiency from your HVAC system.

To make it easier to think about your furnace’s winter performance, use a rating system you’re familiar with: 1 to 5 stars. Think about your comfort this past winter, your monthly heating bills, and if the furnace needed any help. Then give the furnace a star rating and consult our guide below:

Another term for a one-star furnace is a broken furnace. If you give your furnace the lowest possible rating, it almost certainly means the furnace has failed and you can’t trust it to do the most basic part of the job. In other words, it’s time to get a new furnace. Please schedule the replacement as soon as possible; this isn’t something you want to wait to do until spring. 

This is … not great. Your furnace is providing your home with heat, but not the way it used to. Or maybe you needed to schedule an expensive repair for it to keep it going. If the furnace is more than 15 years old, these problems indicate the system is ready for a replacement. For a younger furnace, such a slide indicates that it needs a major repair ASAP.

This middle-of-the-road rating likely means you were happy with your furnace and didn’t run into anything that left you in the cold. But you aren’t entirely happy, and we advise you think about what kept you from going higher than average. Repairs? Worries that it’s getting old? You may want to have technicians inspect the furnace and give you recommendations on how to improve it and an estimate on how much longer it will work energy-efficiently.

Pretty good! A four-star performance from a furnace means you could count on it during the winter for heat when you needed it, and your family was comfortable. No repair issues, no serious problems. Still, you didn’t give the furnace the full five stars. Why not? Thinking about this will help you understand future system needs, as well as a reminder to keep up with routine maintenance.

Your furnace is working great, and you haven’t seen an increase in your heating bills. We’re glad. But even with a furnace you think is doing the best it can, there is something to think about, which is maintenance. We’d wager one of the reasons you could give your furnace a five-star rave review is because you schedule maintenance for it every fall. Please keep it up, because this routine maintenance will help you give out more five-stars in the future and keep furnace replacement many years off. 

Contact Vital Heating & Air , a licensed Indianapolis heating contractor , when you need furnace service. “Your Comfort Is Vital!”