Temperatures are dropping as the fall deepens, and heating systems are coming to life to start their long job of keeping homes cozy and warm until spring. We hope that you’ve already scheduled a maintenance visit for your heater. (If not, call us right away to schedule it.) Heating maintenance is the best way to prevent malfunctions and inefficient performance during the coming season.

However, you must remain vigilant about your heater during these early days of the heating season. When anything seems amiss with it, arrange for repairs right away. This way you will have problems corrected before they can become larger (and they will become larger) and have your heater in prime shape for when the cold weather deepens. Below are some warning signs to watch for:

Louder operation than normal

Is your furnace making a racket that seems abnormal? Or is the heat pump creating a rattling noise that you’ve never noticed before? Such sounds should never be ignored, as they are one of the principle ways a heater tells you that something has gone wrong. Shut down the heater and call for repairs.

The heater is turning on and off repeatedly

This is a problem known as short-cycling, and it’s one of the most common symptoms of a malfunction in a heater. For some reason, the heater is registering that it has completed its heating cycle before it actually has, and then shuts off. This could be from a miscalibrated thermostat, a loss of refrigerant in a heat pump, a clogged filter, or a poorly sized system. It needs to be corrected soon, otherwise it will place huge stress on the heater’s components.

You find cold spots in certain rooms

If the heater received a professional installation, it should create an even distribution of comfort throughout the rooms. When a heating system begins to fail at producing enough heat output, an early sign is when certain rooms do not get warm enough. It will take a professional technician to track down the source of this and fix it.

Lifeline Plumbing, Heating & Cooling offers excellent heating repair in Dundee, IL and throughout Chicagoland.