How’s your furnace doing this winter? Are you happy with its performance?
Is it efficient enough, so you don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for your heat? Or are you starting to wonder about your options for upgrading?
As long as your furnace hasn’t totally failed, you’ve got time to ponder the possibilities. What repairs are good investments, and when would you be better off investing in a new furnace?
What other considerations should you keep in mind? We have some helpful tips for you as you make this important decision.
Age
The piece of information that you should weigh most heavily as you think about upgrading your furnace is the age of your existing one.
A gas furnace should be expected to function well for about fifteen years, as long as you’ve had regular maintenance done. An electric furnace or heat pump can last twenty or even twenty-five years.
However, the vast majority of repairs (and thus the greatest expenses) occur during the last few years that a furnace is functional.
If your furnace is creeping up in age, and you know it won’t last many more years, you should start to think hard about whether a repair is worth it.
Expense of Repairs
If your furnace is only, say, seven years old, even an expensive repair is a reasonable choice. It could mean keeping your furnace running for several more years.
But if you have an eighteen-year-old electric furnace, or a twelve-year-old gas furnace, you might be better off investing in replacement rather than a very costly repair.
If it only needs a small repair, though, which might keep it running for a couple more years, that might be the sensible thing to do.
So if repair needs come up, you should weigh the cost against the amount of life your furnace might have left in it.
Frequency of Repairs
One large repair bill is a clear and obvious expense. However, small repairs do cause costs to add up. It’s perfectly normal for a furnace to require a repair every few years.
But if your furnace has been requiring repairs every year, or even more than once a year, we would consider that frequent.
This can mean not only dealing with the expense, but also frequent inconvenience and the constant worry that something else is about to go wrong. You might find winters much less stressful if you got a furnace upgrade in Pensacola, FL.
Efficiency
With regular maintenance, a furnace can generally operate efficiently for many years. If it’s reaching the end of its lifetime, though, the efficiency will drop more than maintenance can keep up with.
If you’re unpleasantly surprised by your utility bills, a new furnace could make a big difference. Also, there are simply more options for efficient furnaces these days, and it might be worth it to you to upgrade your furnace now and enjoy low heating bills for years to come.
Contact the team at Commander Air Inc. Your hometown heating and cooling specialist for three generations.