3 Reasons to Regularly Maintain Your HVAC System

Like everything else (your car, your guitar, even your body), your heating and cooling systems will wear down with use. It’s just a fact of life. To keep everything functioning for as long as possible, you maintain them. With your car, you take it in for regular oil changes, rotate the tires, etc; with a guitar, you change or clean the strings, have a set up done on a regular basis; and with your health, you visit a doctor for regular check-ups. The same goes for your HVAC system: it needs to be tuned up on a regular basis to keep it running efficiently. Here are the top three reasons (in our opinion) why you should stay on top of routine maintenance:

Things clog up. With constant dust particles, pet hair, and various things floating in from outside, filters clog up – which seems like an obvious statement since they’re there to catch environmental nuisances. But it’s easy to forget about them since they’re out of sight; it’s easy to leave them and forget them. When a filter or drain isn’t cleaned or replaced when it needs to be, it gets difficult for air, water – whatever needs to pass through – to pass through. That can cause fires, flooding, freezing – basically everything short of a swarm of locusts.

Regular maintenance prolongs the life of the system. Just like with your car and any mechanically functioning piece of equipment, maintaining your system expands its life. The average lifespan of a heating system that’s been well maintained is anywhere from 10-25 years; a central cooling system can last up to fifteen. However, if it’s poorly maintained and cared for, the lifespan shortens quite a bit – which means you’re going to have to replace the entire system or at least many of the components more often; and you’ll still be paying for quite a few repairs before then. And those replacements and repairs really begin to add up over time.

Unmaintained systems affect your health. If a filter’s old and clogged, you’re breathing in the particles it’s supposed to be filtering out. If anyone in your home has asthma or severe allergies, you know what an issue this can be. When the coils of your A/C unit aren’t maintained, they can begin to freeze up; and when the warmer weather hits and they begin to melt, that water can allow mold to form, causing even more breathing hazards to your home.

It just makes more sense to maintain your system on a routine basis instead of dealing with the consequences of ignoring all at once. To schedule a maintenance service visit with one of our technicians, contact us here.