5 Things to Try On Your Furnace Before Calling a Technician

1.  CHANGE AIR FILTER

Your furnace needs to have good airflow to work properly.  The #1 way that you can help your furnace have good airflow is with a clean air filter. Go to your furnace and take out the air filter and hold it up to the light. If you can’t see light coming through, there isn’t enough air getting through it and it’s time to replace it. Typically, you should replace your air filter every 1-3 months, So, you should be checking this often. When was the last time you checked yours?

2.  OPEN VENTS AROUND THE HOUSE

Your system is designed to move a certain amount of air out through the house and then bring that same amount back to the furnace. Just like a dirty filter can restrict airflow to a furnace, so can having too many closed vents. Go around the house and make sure all of the vents are open and that the air return vents aren’t blocked by anything.

3.  CHECK THE EXHAUST FAN

It’s common on high-efficiency furnaces to have the exhaust vent outside. Sometimes it’s put down low. If it happens to snow a lot, it could cover the exhaust vent resulting in your furnace shutting down. If that happens, all you need to is clear away the snow from the vent. If it’s not snowing and you can see into the exhaust, check to see if there’s anything blocking it, such as a bird’s nest that was made in Spring or Summer.

4.  CHANGE THERMOSTAT BATTERIES

Your furnace doesn’t know to turn on unless it gets a message from the thermostat. So, if the batteries in your thermostat are low, it might now have enough power to get that message to the furnace. So, it’s important to make sure that your thermostat has good battery power so it can work properly. To do this, take your thermostat off the wall and replace the batteries.

5.  RESET THE FURNACE

Once you’ve tried the other things listed above, you want to try resetting the furnace. Furnaces have a circuit board and it’s constantly sending and receiving messages from it. Resetting the furnace can clear out the error codes and help it to start up again (kind of like when a computer is bugging out and you turn it off and back on to reset it). Sometimes this works for your furnace. To reset your furnace all you have to do is turn it off (either with the switch or breaker), count to 10, and then turn it back on.

When you reset your furnace this way, you aren’t really fixing anything. You are just clear out the error codes and giving it a chance to start up. If you try and restart it and it comes on again and then shuts off again and you restart it again and it shuts off . . . that’s a sign that there’s probably something else wrong with it and you’re going to want to call a technician to come take a look at it and see what’s going on.