Heating systems come in all shapes and sizes, and what works for one home may not be right for another. But regardless of the kind of home you have, you need a reliable heating system to function every day during our cold Teaneck, NJ winters.

A boiler system is worth consideration no matter what kind of home you have, and if you need a sudden replacement in the middle of winter – or you’re starting to plan for spring and want to get your options straight – then it might prove to be an excellent fit for you. Here are 3 benefits that you should readily consider.

  1. They’re efficient. Forced-air furnaces push hot air through the home to warm it, which is inexpensive but ends up wasting a lot of energy. Leaks in the ductwork can leech heated air out of the system, and warm air has a way of becoming cool air very quickly. Boilers used water or steam to provide heat, and can convey those warm temperatures much more readily.
  1. They last a long time. Boilers are extremely durable systems, which use comparatively few moving parts. While they suffer breakdowns from time to time and require maintenance to stay in good shape, they can last a long time, giving you good value for your dollar.
  1. Health and comfort. Because boilers use radiant heating, they don’t need to blow dust or germs through the air. Furthermore, radiant heating tends to last longer, since warm water or steam cools down more slowly than air, meaning that your house will stay cozy and comfortable for longer periods of time.

If a boiler system sounds like a good fit for you, call the pros at BZ Dependable Plumbing & Heating Inc. today. We’ll go over your options with you and schedule a timely installation service, either now or in the spring!

If you’re in the market for a new heater, chances are you need to act fast. Winters are cold enough here in Bogota, NJ that you need a reliable heating system to function every day, and if your existing system can’t limp along until spring, you need to move on getting it replaced immediately. The more you know about what to look for in a new heater, the better.

In particular, you want to pay attention to the AFUE rating, which stands for Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency. It measures the overall efficiency of the system, and can help you choose the heater that will give you the most for your dollar.

A SIMPLE PERCENTAGE

The AFUE rating is measured in a simple percentage, measuring the amount of power consumed by the heater is output in actual heating power. For example, a heater with an 80% AFUE rating generates 80% of its consumed energy in heating power, with the other 20% being lost to waste and inefficiency. Obviously, the higher the AFUE rating, the better, though that’s not always the whole story.

BALANCED AGAINST POWER LEVELS

The AFUE rating measures efficiency, but efficiency only matters when the power output matches the needs of your home. It you have an underpowered heater, it doesn’t matter much if it’s more efficient than a more powerful heater: it will run so much more often that you’ll end up paying more in monthly bills anyway. Once you and your technician have sized your home properly and determine the correct power level your heater requires, you can then evaluate the AFUE ratings within the list of appropriate heaters.

Decisions like these always benefit from the word of a trained technician. Call the team at BZ Dependable Plumbing & Heating Inc. today to set up a consultation. We’ll find the right heater to you and install it with confidence and pride!

Furnace maintenance in Teaneck

Most homes in Englewood, NJ and surrounding cities use forced-air furnaces for their heat. The air is warmed in the furnace itself, and then distributed through your home via the same system of ducts that carries cool air from your AC in the summer. It’s a simple and effective system, but like any other piece of technology, it can run into trouble from time to time.

Luckily, most of the signs are easy to spot, and while only trained technicians can properly diagnose a problem, you can certainly tell that something is amiss when the heat levels coming out of the air in your vents are not as high as you expect. That means your furnace will need to work harder to do its job, raising your monthly bills and the risk of larger breakdowns in equal measures. The causes can be numerous, which is one of the reasons you need a professional to fix it. But it can include any one of the following:

  • Clogged Burners. Dust, dirt and grit can gum up the heads of the burners, especially over a long summer when the furnace sits unused. For obvious reasons, that means less heat is available when you turn your furnace on.
  • Duct Breaches. A breach in your ducts somewhere will either pull heated air out of the ducts or pull cold unconditioned air in.
  • Clogged Gas Lines. A clog in the gas line causes the same kind of trouble that a clogged burner does: lowering the fuel and reducing the heat in equal measures.
  • Overheating. In the event of a clogged filter or similar obstruction, hot air will back up into the furnace. Depending on the system, it may shut off one or more burners to prevent other components from overheating. In these cases, the lower heat levels are often accompanied by a reduced amount of air flow.

How To Avoid Furnace Repairs

Ultimately, the best case scenario is that you don’t experience low heat levels with your furnace. While you can’t always avoid repairs, there is plenty you can do to keep your furnace running well, longer.

Schedule Maintenance

This is our number one piece of advice for anyone hoping to avoid a sudden heating system breakdown. Your heater may be spared from repairs for the rest of the season when you schedule heating maintenance early on (preferably in the fall). In fact, few things can improve the performance of your heater more than a timely maintenance session, which addresses all those little issues too small to merit a heating repair call on their own.

Technicians make adjustments to your system, like cleaning burners and adjusting pressure settings. They check for any potential problems that exist within your heater, so you can get these taken care of before temperatures drop too much. All of this helps your furnace run more smoothly, with a much smaller chance of a sudden system breakdown. When applied on a yearly basis over time, it can even extend the lifetime of your heater.

Change Your Filters

Professional maintenance only happens once a year, but technicians recommend you change your air filter every 1-3 months. Neglecting to change the filter can result in big trouble for your heater. That means it’s not worth waiting until a technician checks your heating system before completing this maintenance task.

Don’t Overwork Your Furnace

When you turn the temperature up higher than you need, it doesn’t actually make the heater work faster. It only forces it to run for longer, heat the home more than you need, and use up energy. Worst of all, your heating system may work so hard that its lifespan is slowly reduced as the parts wear down far more than they should.

Take it easy on your thermostat! Program efficient but comfortable temperatures ahead of time with your programmable thermostat so that you’re always comfortable when you arrive home on a cold evening. Consider using a Wi-Fi thermostat to help your heater run even more efficiently, and monitor it while you are away from home.

Oil to Gas Conversions

If you’re using an old oil-fed boiler system, you’re wasting a lot of energy on an outdated and inefficient fuel system. Converting the boiler to use natural gas is an excellent way to not only save a lot of money on monthly costs, but to be more environmentally friendly as well. Tax rebates and other benefits can make the process much  more affordable, and getting an oil-to-gas conversion today can allow you to enjoy the savings all winter long.

Call BZ Dependable to perform heating repairs today!

Teaneck, NJ is an old community, which means that we have a number of old-fashioned heating systems in our homes. Older heaters often rely on oil for fuel, which was the staple for many years, but it now being slowly phased out in favor of more efficient and cleaner-burning fuels. The good news is that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to get rid of your existing heater, especially if it’s still running strong. An oil-to-gas conversion will refit it to burn natural gas and provide a number of terrific benefits in the bargain.

WHY DO IT?

Oil is a reliable fuel source, but it’s supremely inefficient. That means it costs much more for an oil-fired heater to run than a heater relying on other kinds of fuel. Considering how cold our winters get and how much heat you require to keep your home comfortable, that can add up to quite a bit. Indeed, when factored in over time, the savings could completely cover the cost of the conversion.

Furthermore, oil is not a clean-burning fuel, and as time goes on, older furnaces tend to exacerbate the issue. Natural gas burns very cleanly, which means you’ll be helping the environment by making an oil-to-gas conversion as well as putting money back in your pocket.

HOW IT WORKS

A trained technician must perform the conversion, which typically takes place in stages. The technician examines your system and provides an estimate of conversion costs, which usually involves running in gas piping to fuel the system as well as making key changes in the system’s components to let it run on gas. Once the gas service is turned on, you can begin using your converted heater immediately.

Now is the time to make such changes, before the weather gets too cold. Call the professionals at BZ Dependable to learn more!

With the official arrival of fall this week, it’s time for Teaneck, NJ homeowners to take a good look at their heating systems, which in is part of the country can often mean a boiler or similar type of heater. Boilers are efficient and reliable forms of technology, but they can still break down just like any other piece of equipment, especially if they’re older and have endured multiple winters.

Now is an excellent time to run your heating system and check for any signs of trouble. Ideally, a maintenance session from a trained technician should be scheduled, but in the event you can’t do that, you can help yourself out by watching for any signs of unusual activity in your boiler. They can include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Strange noises, such as clangs, groans, and whistles, which can occur at any point in your boiler system. “Strange” is defined as anything that you don’t normally associate with the boiler’s regular functions.
  • Leaks, which can often be spotted by looking for wet spots along nearby walls, floors, or furnishings. In some cases, pinhole leaks wont release liquid water, in which can you can spot them by examining the pressure gauge for any loss in pressure.
  • Smells, such as burning oil, gas, or a strange metallic odor. This usually indicates a leak of vital fluids, and can also signal a gas leak, which is a significant danger to the household.
  • Unusually high bills, which take place without an attendant rise in use. This is more of a long-term method of spotting a boiler, but you should practice it throughout the winter. It could save you a great deal if it alerts you to a potential problem!

When you spot these problems, turn your boiler off and call in BZ Dependable to make repairs!

We see a lot of furnace problems this time of year here in Bogota, NJ, in part because the weather is slowly starting to turn and homeowners are looking to their furnaces in anticipation of the long winter to come. The sooner you can address any issues that may crop up, the better off you’ll be. One of the most serious is a cracked heat exchanger, which can shut down your furnace completely and needs replacing in order to ensure the health and safety of your family. 

HOW DOES IT WORK?

A gas furnace uses burners to provide heat, fed by ignited gas. But simply burning gas into the air is a very inefficient way to warm that air. A heat exchanger solves that problem. It’s simply a shaped piece of metal that transfers the heat from the burners evenly to the air they need to warm, while shunting exhaust gases like carbon monoxide safely out of your home.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY CRACK?

Because they are built with sturdiness in mind and because they don’t normally have moving parts, heat exchangers can last a long time. But the stress of constantly heating up and cooling down — especially in the cold of our New Jersey winters — can create stresses that can lead to cracks. When that happens, poisonous exhaust gasses can leak into your home, constituting a serious threat to your health. A quality carbon monoxide detector can alert you to the problem,. and many furnaces have automatic shutdown features that turn the system off the moment they detect any gas. But that still leaves the problem of getting the cracked heat exchanger fixed. Now is the best possible time to do that: before the autumn begins in earnest.

Call the friendly pros at BZ Dependable today for timely furnace maintenance and repairs!

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