With the winter months in full swing, you may have noticed that your furnace isn’t doing a good job of heating your entire home, or maybe your heating costs are higher than they used to be. Perhaps it’s time to get a new, more efficient furnace. However, if you already have an efficient furnace, the problem likely lies elsewhere, such as with a home that isn’t properly weatherized.
True comfort begins with the house itself, and it doesn’t matter how good your furnace is if the rest of the house itself is inefficient. Before investing in a new furnace, try running through this simple efficiency checklist:
- Is your attic properly insulated and sealed from air leaks? Spending money on a better furnace is pointless if all of your heated air is escaping through the roof.
- How efficient is your insulation? Foam insulation, especially in the attic, tends to be more efficient than older forms of insulation such as fibreglass. Depending on the age of your house, it might be worth an upgrade.
- Are the seals on your windows and doors intact? Leaks along these spaces really add up, with the collective air-leak space in older homes ranging from the size of a brick to the equivalent of an open window.
- Are your appliances Energy Star certified? The federal Energy Star program qualifies appliances based upon their high efficiency and low carbon footprint. Having an Energy Star certified appliance means you’ll save money on utility costs while still obtaining stellar performance.
Taking steps to make sure your home is properly insulated and sealed against heat loss will ensure that your furnace can function at peak efficiency. If you’re paying for a higher-efficiency furnace, it makes no sense to not take steps to let it do the job it was designed to do. But what if you aren’t able to weatherize your home on your own?
That’s where Ernst Heating & Cooling comes in. We are a professional HVAC company serving southwest Illinois. Offering a variety of skilled services, we can provide expert advice on improving the efficiency of both your home and furnace. Please feel free to contact us and schedule an appointment today. We serve Alton, Troy, Edwardsville and other communities in the Metro-East area.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Hamel, Alton, Glen Carbon, Highland, Greenville, and Troy, Illinois and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about furnaces and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.Â
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