A Triangle heating season runs from the first freezing nights in November to the last ones in March. The tips for keeping a furnace or heat pump efficient through it are simple enough that they hardly need a list. What they need is timing, because a tip that matters in December is not the one that matters in February. This post offers four, one for each month from December through March. Most Durham homes heat with a heat pump, and a good number of older and rural homes still heat with oil or gas, so each tip covers all three.
December: put the filter on the calendar
The heating season’s first full month is the time to make the filter a habit rather than a memory, because everything else about efficiency depends on it. A filter loaded with a fall’s worth of dust and pet hair restricts airflow, and a heating system pulling through it works harder for every degree. On a gas or oil furnace, restricted airflow overheats the heat exchanger and trips the limit switch, so the furnace shuts itself off mid-cycle. On a heat pump, it can bring on the auxiliary heat strips, the most expensive way there is to heat a house. Check the filter on the first of each month, hold it to a light, and replace it when light no longer passes through easily. Set a reminder on the phone for the first of January, February, and March while you are at it.
January: set the thermostat once and leave it
January brings the Triangle’s coldest nights, and the habit that costs the most is a thermostat that moves up and down all day. On a heat pump, asking for a jump of several degrees at once tells the system to bring on the auxiliary strips to get there quickly, so a household that drops the heat to 62 overnight and calls for 72 at breakfast pays strip rates every morning of the month. Find a setting you can live with, keep the overnight setback small, and let the system hold it there. A smart thermostat runs the schedule for you and can raise the temperature gradually, which keeps the strips off, and it reports faults, so a problem reaches your phone before it reaches the house on a 20-degree night.
February: check what the cold has done
By February the system has run hard for two months, and the tip is to walk the house and look. Confirm every supply vent and return grille is open and clear of furniture and rugs, including the ones in rooms you rarely use, because closing vents raises pressure in the ducts and strains the blower rather than saving anything. Step outside and clear leaves and pine straw from the heat pump’s outdoor unit, which needs airflow in winter as much as in summer, and after an ice storm knock ice off the top of the cabinet and confirm the fan turns. If the house has an oil furnace, glance at the tank gauge, since a tank that runs dry pulls sludge into the lines and turns a fill into a service call. And if one room never warmed all winter, note it for the next visit, because that is a duct problem rather than a thermostat problem.
March: schedule the visit while the schedule is open
The last tip is the one most often skipped, because by March the season feels over. It is the right month to book the maintenance visit that will find what the winter did: a heat strip that failed in January and has been quietly missing, a capacitor that started the blower hard for three months, a flame sensor on a gas furnace coated with a season’s residue, an oil burner nozzle due for replacement, or a duct that separated in the crawl space when the clay froze and shifted. Those show up on a technician’s instruments and nowhere else, and March is a convenient month for the appointment. Members of the VIP Club have it on the calendar already, with up to 25 percent off anything the visit finds.
The one thing that is not a tip
A gas or oil furnace flame that burns yellow or orange rather than blue, a carbon monoxide detector that sounds, a smell that lingers after the furnace starts, or headaches and nausea in the house while the heat runs are not efficiency problems. They are signs of incomplete combustion or a cracked heat exchanger, and the right response in any month is to shut the system off and call. Our furnace technicians treat that call as the priority it is, and members of the VIP Club receive priority, same-day service when a covered system fails.
When the tips are not enough
If the filter is fresh, the thermostat is steady, the vents are open, and the house is still expensive or uneven to heat, the system is telling you something a homeowner cannot fix from the living room. Happy Home Services has been Durham’s trusted heating and air experts since 1955, and a mid-season visit sorts it out. Reach us 24/7 by phone or website chat, and the technician will record the readings, review them with you, and explain what the system needs, with honest, upfront pricing with a 100% money-back guarantee.