The heating season is set up in the fall. The jobs below take an afternoon between them, and they are the ones that decide how the system runs from November through April. Work through them in any order.
Clear the outdoor unit
The unit outside spends the fall collecting whatever the trees drop. Leaves and seeds pack against the sides and settle around the base, and anything that blocks the airflow makes the equipment work harder than it needs to. Pull off what has gathered, cut back whatever grew in over the summer, and leave open space around it.
Switch your air filter
Put a fresh filter in before the heating season starts. One that has been in place since spring restricts airflow, and a restricted filter costs you efficiency every hour the system runs.
We recommend checking it every few months. How quickly one fills up depends on the house, so pets, renovation dust and how hard the system has been running all change the answer. What normal maintenance covers sets out the handful of jobs worth doing yourself.
Reverse your ceiling fans
Warm air collects at the ceiling and stays there, which is exactly where it is no use to anyone. Most fans have a small switch on the housing that reverses the direction. Clockwise, on the lowest speed, pulls air up through the middle of the room and eases the warm layer back down the walls without creating a draught you can feel.
Run them on low rather than high. The point is to move the warm layer, not to create air movement across your skin, which makes a room feel cooler no matter what the thermostat says. Turn the switch back in the spring.
Book the heating-season visit
On a fuel appliance, combustion and venting have to be checked with instruments and the heat exchanger inspected properly. On a heat pump, refrigerant charge and defrost operation are measured rather than eyeballed. Electrical connections loosen over years of heating and cooling cycles and get tightened. None of that is visible from outside the cabinet.
We recommend two visits a year, one before the cooling season and one before the heating season, which is also what most manufacturers expect in order to keep a warranty valid. Our maintenance plans cover both with a written record of each visit, and the indoor furnace checklist pairs with everything above.
Talk it through with us
If you would rather hand the seasonal list to someone else, that is what the plans are for. Get in touch and we will set the visits around your equipment and your schedule. We work across Montreal and Laval, and if your system is in good shape and needs nothing beyond the basics, we will tell you that too.
