Obviously, we understand why you’d ask this. Not only do many homeowners believe—mistakenly so—that maintenance isn’t that important, but we live in Florida! We barely even use our heating systems, why schedule maintenance for them?
Well, simply put, because we do use them. Your heating system has an important job and you would likely be able to effectively use it for however brief a period you may need it, otherwise we doubt you’d be reading this blog post right now.
But to make sure that your heater actually functions and you’re not calling for emergency heating repair in Niceville, FL during our brief-but-chilly winter months, then you’ll want to schedule preventive maintenance for your heater, no matter what type of system you’re using. While this won’t guarantee that you won’t have a problem, professional maintenance is the only way to reduce your risk.
Address Problems Early On
Most heating system issues you’ll deal with don’t always have obvious symptoms. At least, they don’t at first. Typically, problems tend to develop slowly over time. This is why we stress maintenance be done once a year. These problems, though slow growing, can inflict a great deal of damage to your system until a repair need does become obvious. Chances are, you don’t want to wait for an obvious heating problem to crop up.
Preventive, professional maintenance includes a comprehensive inspection of your heater, during which our heating pros will isolate any pending repair needs or suspected problems. These problems can then be managed before they grow into a bigger issue.
Heating systems that receive routine maintenance have been shown to function up to 40% more efficiently than systems that don’t receive any maintenance. Well-maintained heaters have been found to be up to 90% less likely to develop further problems.
“When Should I Schedule Maintenance?”
In order to get the most benefit from maintenance, you need to schedule it often enough. Most systems can get by with one preventive maintenance session each fall. But the timing of your tune-up is less important than how often you have it done—once a year is the recommendation. And if you have a heat pump, which gets used year-round, then once every 6 months is what’s necessary to keep your heater in the best shape.
The reason we typically recommend heating maintenance in the fall, though, is to ensure it doesn’t have any preexisting needs before it’s needed the most. Your heating system sits for months and months without use, so just turning it on and expecting it to work flawlessly is a bit ambitious, unless you have maintenance done from a pro. Bypassing this service for a year will make it much more likely for a problem to occur with the system. As we stated before, we may not use our heating systems for very long, but when we do, we want them to work effectively and efficiently as possible, right?