If you want to heat your home without breaking the bank, it takes more than just a high-efficiency furnace. Although having an efficient furnace is a great start, several other factors influence the efficiency of your home. Below are five factors that can decrease the efficiency of your furnace and what you can do to avoid them.
5 factors that affect furnace efficiency
- Lack of maintenance. If you don’t have annual maintenance performed on your furnace, it can become inefficient, unreliable and a safety hazard to your home. Homeowners who skip out on their annual tune-ups often experience increasingly high energy bills as the years go on. With annual maintenance, your furnace will be brought back up to its peak efficiency and consume less energy all winter long.
- Dirty filters. When dirt and other airborne particles build up on your filter, it makes it much harder for your furnace to push air through your system. To make up for the blockage in airflow, your furnace works harder and consumes more energy. Make sure to change your filters regularly, especially this time of year when our furnaces are running consistently and particles build up on our filters quickly.
- High thermostat settings. It is common knowledge that the higher you set your thermostat temperature, the more energy your furnace will consume. As we wrote previously in this blog, you don’t have to sacrifice comfort to save energy with your thermostat. Simply find the lowest settings you’re comfortable with and stick to an energy-saving schedule for your home temperatures throughout the week.
- Not enough insulation. Insulation acts as a protective barrier between your home’s conditioned and unconditioned spaces. Without enough insulation, your home will have a hard time containing heat and your furnace will have to consume more energy to make up for it. Make sure your home is insulated to the proper R-value to avoid losing energy.
- Air leaks. Warm air naturally travels toward colder temperatures. If you have air leaks in your home during winter, the warm air that your furnace produces will escape outside. Again, this will force your furnace to work harder and lead to a spike in your energy bills. Check for air leaks in your home and seal up any problem areas that you find.
If you have any questions about increasing the efficiency of your furnace, or if you’d like a heating system serviced or installed in your home, contact [company_name}, your St. Louis heating and cooling company. We service the St. Louis area and surrounding towns like Cottleville, Manchester, and Winghaven.
