The summer may be hot and your furnace is probably the furthest thing from your mind right now, but that is no reason to let the cold weather sneak up on you. Before you know it, there will be a few cold days here and there and you will start to worry about the maintenance of your heating system. Most homeowners do not realize it, but summer can be one of the best times to get your annual furnace inspection and cleaning.
The first thing that we need to cover is why annual furnace inspections are necessary. To start with, you want to make sure that the system is mechanically sound. If there is a component that needs to be repaired or replaced, catching it early is the best chance to keep the repair costs low and to maintain the integrity of the unit as a whole. Additionally, the yearly cleaning and maintenance helps to ensure that the system is clean and running to its best possible performance. This will reduce the amount of work that the furnace has to put into heating the home and by doing so, it will save on wear and tear to the system and it will reduce the cost of home heating.
Now that we have a basic understanding of why you need annual maintenance on your heater, the question still remains as to why it is a good idea to have this job done in the summer. Well, there are few good reasons that make the summer a more advantageous time to get service done instead of waiting until it starts to get cold.
To start with, the majority of homeowners wait until the mid to late fall to get their home heating system serviced. This means that it is going to be a busier time for service technicians than the middle of the summer. Not only will HVAC techs be doing more routine inspection and maintenance calls in the fall, but they will also have more repair and replacement jobs to perform. This means that there will be fewer appointments available to get your furnace cleaned and checked in the fall than there will be in the summer. In addition to it being easier to schedule the appointment, you may actually be able to get a better deal during a time when the service techs have less work to do.
The summer is also a better time for this routine maintenance because it gets you ahead of the game. You do not want to wait until you need your heater to make sure that it is in good working order. If a cold spell rolls in and your heater is not functioning properly, it may be hard to schedule an immediate service call and emergency visits tend to cost more than work that it done on a schedule. It is just better to be prudent and make sure that the system is working properly and safely before you need it.
This need to get things checked early can be especially true if your furnace needs any extensive repairs. If your furnace needs some serious work done on it, the job might take a day or two for the HVAC professional to complete. Being without your heater for a day or two in the summer is no problem at all, but in the late fall the temperatures can dip pretty low and this will be more than a minor inconvenience.
Your annual heater inspection and cleaning are important for so many reasons and there is really no good reason to wait for the last moment to get it done. In fact, when you really think about it, it makes much more sense to do it long before it starts to get cold outside. Schedule your annual furnace maintenance early and you can save on time, money and possibly a whole lot of stress.