Reduce Allergens in Your Home with Furnace Maintenance

Having a furnace in your home is essentially a modern necessity. As much as we would all love to tear them away from our walls and send them out the window sometimes, having a working furnace is no doubt comforting during the long months of winter.

So when the furnace stops working properly, it’s absolutely a source of stress and discomfort, especially when you have a family that you need to keep warm.

Fortunately there are a lot of different avenues to take when your furnace is acting up, and Arco Home Services is here to help you find the best option for you and your family.

One of the biggest problems with furnaces is the inevitable fact that they collect a lot of dust, pollen, pet hair, and other common allergens. These are machines that have a sole purpose of pushing air around, so it really only makes sense that things floating in the air would get trapped inside.

The big problem happens when the furnace starts to push these allergens around inside of the home. Some may not be bothered by it, but to those of us with sensitive allergies, this can make us just as uncomfortable as if there were no heat working at all! Which would ultimately defeat the purpose of having a working furnace in the first place.

It’s a simple problem with a fairly simple solution. Many people don’t realize that a furnace is much like a car, in that they are built to break down. Not necessarily in the sense that the manufacturers want them to be faulty machines, but rather that they are intricate systems that require regular maintenance and upkeep in order for them to work at full capacity.

Now obviously we can’t all learn the ins and outs of furnace maintenance, so it may seem like the best choice to contact an HVAC repair company after the first few signs of a dusty home. But really you don’t need to pay for a professional repair every time that your furnace is kicking out dust.

Here’s where the fun begins:

Step 1: Using a screwdriver, remove the service panel from your furnace. You may have a model that does not require a screwdriver to remove, but you’ll most likely need one for this step.

Step 2: Locate the filter for your furnace. This will be somewhere near the intake/outtake blower, which should be fairly easy to find.

Step 3: If you can see dirt on the filter right off the bat, that’s a sure fire sign that you will need to take it out and clean it. If it’s still hard to tell whether or not there is buildup, take the filter out and check. You can never have a filter that is too clean.

Step 4: Cleaning your filter is simple. Take it to your sink and give it a good rinse until all the dirt is cleared. If you really want to show it who’s boss, bring it outside and give it the works with your garden hose.

Step 5: This one kind of goes without saying, but we aren’t skipping over any steps here. Make sure you let the filter dry completely. Putting it back in without letting it dry out isn’t going to do anything good for you or your furnace.

Step 6: Replace the filter into its position in your furnace!

Voila! You have cleaned your furnace filter. Now you can enjoy a cleaner, fresher atmosphere in your own home.

Be sure to check it regularly to keep the allergens at bay, and if you get through these steps and find that there wasn’t much of an improvement, or worse yet, something else breaks on the furnace, don’t hesitate to give Arco Home Services a call at (216) 202-3778! While you may not know the ins and outs of furnace repair, we DO! We’re more than happy to help play a part in keeping you and your family comfortable and warm.

“Pollen” by Alastair Vance is licenced under CC BY 2.0

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