How to Prepare Your HVAC for Winter 

Nature releases snow on us during the winter. It’s time for the extreme cold. Your home is the place where you live to shield you from the element and harsh conditions. This is where your HVAC comes in. Shielding you from the extreme cold. 

You don’t want your room to be as cold as it is outside. This means more work from your HVAC. If you never bothered getting it ready for this period where it will be overused beyond normal. Then it might end up on the fritz before the winter finishes. 

In this article, we will give you tips to get your HVAC ready for its period of strain and overuse. That is winter. 

Let’s get started!

1. Ready up your air filter

Your HVAC unit doesn’t only heat up or cool your room when needed. It also cleans the air that enters your home by filtering dust and other suspended particles that you may breathe in while breathing air. The air filter is the equipment that is responsible for this task. 

As your filter does the policing job of capturing dust and suspended air particles, it doesn’t take the dust to a special prison. But the particles sit on the filter until it is cleaned. If you don’t clean the filter for a long time, it gets clogged. With a clogged filter, your HVAC unit needs to do more work to send the warm air through the dust blockade. And the air that passes will pick up a lot of particles, allergens, and dust that sit on the filter and send it to your home.

During the cold winter, you don’t just need to stay warm, you also need quality air. Because your immune system combats sicknesses associated with the cold winter. You can save your system the extra stress by not breathing in contaminated air. To do that, make sure you clean your air filter to get your unit prepared to capture all the capturable particles.

2. Check the insulators of your attic

Storing warm water in a flask will keep the water warm. Storing in a cup will keep just the water, and not the hotness. That’s because the flask is well insulated and can retain heat. During the cold winter, you need all the hot air to remain hot. That’s where insulators come in. It’s possible that your insulator is intact and doesn’t need any more touch. But you can never be so sure. That’s why we advise you to always inspect your attic to find out if you’ll need to revisit the insulation before the winter finally steps in. 

Give attention to your attic insulator. Heat loss doesn’t look like a big deal at first. But it translates as money loss later on as your utility bill skyrockets to an outrageous rate. In fact, when HVAC users complain of the unusual rise in utility bills, one of our first suspects is insulation. 

If you haven’t given your insulation a concern before, please go check it out as soon as you read this. Chances are that rodents and insects attack causing a wear-off. 

3. Use a programmable thermostat

Many people just set their thermostats at their preferred temperature and leave it that way throughout. And even when they leave, the room keeps staying warm. It’s a huge waste to allow your HVAC system to keep releasing so much hot air while warming your house with no one at home. A 24/7 work won’t just overload your unit, but it will also reduce its longevity. 

If you have in mind to prevent this by making sure to switch off your unit before stepping out, well, that might work. But not exactly because you can easily forget to lower your thermostat before you leave the house if you are in a haste.

The ultimate solution to this is to buy a programmable thermostat. With a programmable thermostat, you can set different temperatures at different times without manually controlling or adjusting it. If you will be leaving your home by 8 am every Sunday to get back by 2 pm, you can schedule your thermostat to be lowered during your absence and continue to hit it up.

You can control a more advanced, re-programmable thermostat with your smartphone. You can program and re-program your thermostat with the smartphone. Also, in case you are coming back home before 2 pm, you can engage your heater a few minutes before you arrive. 

4. Schedule regular maintenance service

It’s a healthy maintenance habit to always revisit equipment or structure even when it’s not yet faulty. Employing such a habit to your HVAC unit ensures it lives for an unimaginable period. Such preventive measures seem cheaper because prevention isn’t just better, but cheaper than cure. Scheduling regular maintenance service is the best way to ensure the longevity of your HVAC unit. 

We usually advise HVAC owners to reach out to HVAC experts as regularly as twice a year. Before the summer, and before winter. You’ll need your heating unit to be intact before the cold winter, and the cooling unit before the cooling unit. Also, your thermostats need to always be accurate to prevent an outrageous rise in the utility bill. 

Precision Air Solutions is always set to maintain your HVAC unit as regularly as you need. We deliver the highest quality services, installations, and sales. In all we do, our goal is to exceed your expectations. Book an appointment with us today to ensure your unit lives long. Reach out to us.