Air-Tro’s Furnace Troubleshooting Tips — Even Greater L.A. Homeowners Need Them

Air-Tro’s Furnace Troubleshooting Tips — Even Greater L.A. Homeowners Need Them

Before the weather gets a bit cooler here in Los Angeles, it’s important to ensure that your furnace is working correctly. To be sure that your system is in good condition, you should understand how to troubleshoot it properly.

The first thing that you should be aware of are the fundamentals of the heating process. Listed below is the steps involved in the heating process for a standard gas furnace:

1. Your furnace brings cold air into the system, filters out unwanted pollutants, and warms it up using a heat exchanger.
2. The conditioned air is sent into your home using a blower motor.
3. After the warm air has been sitting for awhile, it beings to cool. When this happens,  the cooler air is sent back to the furnace through air ducts.
4. The cold air cycles through the heating process again.

Having basic understanding of the heating cycle will help you find problems more easily in your system.

Furnace troubleshooting tips for systems failing to supply heat:

• Take a look at the indoor unit’s power switch. Make sure it’s turned on.
• Check your thermostat and make sure it’s set to heat. Turn the temperature up a couple  of degrees to see if your system starts supplying warm air.
• Inspect the circuit breaker and reset if necessary.
• If there are blown fuses replace them.
• Relight pilot light.

Furnace troubleshooting tips for systems that are supplying minimum heat:

• Inspect your system’s filters. Dirty filters could be restricting airflow.
• Your burners could need adjusting. Leave this job to an expert HVAC technician.

Furnace troubleshooting tips for systems making strange sounds:

• High-pitched sounds could mean that the system’s blower belt is slipping and needs lubrication.
• Low-pitched sounds could be the result of dirty gas burners, or an improperly adjusted pilot light.

If your furnace keeps turning on and off, have an expert inspect your system. A lot of times, this problem indicates that your system has an issue with either the blower motor or the heat anticipator. This problem is best left to a professional.

The experts at Air-Tro, Inc.would be more than willing to inspect your furnace before the temperature drops. Contact us today for further assistance.

Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about furnace trouble-shooting tips and other HVAC topics, visit our website.

Air-Tro Inc. services the greater Los Angeles area as well as the metro areas of Riverside and San Bernardino County.

Furnace man image via Shutterstock