Furnace Troubleshooting: What to Do Before Calling for Furnace Repair

October 07, 2015

The shifting weather in Wausau can mean a variety of things, from the changing color of leaves to switching on your furnace for the colder months. Of course, whole home comfort is your year-round goal, but sometimes our heating and cooling equipment doesn’t feel like helping us out. That doesn’t mean that you’re headed for furnace repair though.

When your furnace fails to work or you notice it behaving weirdly, there are a few things you can check on before calling in the experts at Gilray Heating and Cooling for furnace repair. Here are a couple troubleshooting tips to try before giving us a call. 

1) Check your thermostat

This is one of the most basic checks that homeowners can do themselves, and may solve the concern more than they’d like to admit. Ensure your thermostat is: 

  • Set to “heat”
  • Set higher than the room temperature
  • Using a fresh battery

2) Look at the furnace filter 

Dirty filters can cause furnaces to act out of the ordinary, making them shut down without notice and without making a noise. Furnace filters have been the cause for many furnace repair calls in the past, but there’s no reason to pick up the phone when you can change it yourself. Not to mention that a dirty furnace filter diminishes your system’s efficiency and harms airflow.

3) Find and inspect your furnace’s switches

Nearly all of the time, switches to your furnace are found:

  • Around the furnace and typically look like your regular light switch.
  • At your circuit breaker panel. Identify the breaker that controls your furnace and figure out if it is in the middle position or the Off position. If it is, cycle the breaker to Off and then switch it back to the On position. 

4) Open all of your vents

A routine error among homeowners is to close vents in unoccupied rooms, but this might actually lead to a need for furnace repair. Closing these vents can potentially cause your system to be less efficient and stop working because of added airflow pressure.

If you’ve done these four troubleshooting tips and still aren’t having any luck getting your system back up and running, it’s probably time to give us a call. The experts at Gilray Heating and Cooling in Wausau are here to be sure all of your furnace repair needs are met, so give us a call at 715-301-0727.