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!
