A failed furnace during one of the coldest days of the year is a major problem, one we hope you won’t have to deal with. Regular professional maintenance before the winter starts helps immensely with permitting a furnace failure, but even the finest maintenance can’t prevent all malfunctions with a heating system.
The good news is that our winters in Conway are rarely so cold that a broken furnace becomes a life-threatening emergency. You’ll still want furnace repair in Little Rock, AR as soon as possible, and our team is ready to help you get your house comfortable once more. Before you call us, there are several steps you can take to see if there’s a simple explanation for the furnace isn’t coming on. We’ve listed these troubleshooting steps below.
Check on power to the house
If the furnace stops working in the daytime, you may not have noticed that the power for the house has failed entirely. (Yes, gas furnaces need to have electricity to run. They burn gas to create heat, but rely on multiple electrical components as well, such as the blower fan and the ignition system.) Check the lights to see if you have a general outage.
Examine the thermostat settings
Modern thermostats are complex devices, and even with user-friendly settings, they can easily be set incorrectly. Check that your thermostat is set for “heating” (the “auto” setting doesn’t always work) and that its current setting or programming will request heating. Someone else in the house may have adjusted it without you knowing. Or the kids may have played around with it.
See if the circuit breaker to the furnace has tripped
One of the most common reasons for a furnace to abruptly stop working is that it has overloaded its electrical circuit and caused a breaker in the electrical panel to trip. The blower fan motor is a major culprit behind this. Reset a tripped circuit breaker and then try the furnace. If you keep having the tripped circuit breaker problem, don’t try to force the furnace to work—there’s a malfunction in either the furnace or the electrical panel, and that needs professionals to repair it.
Change out a clogged furnace filter
The furnace filter protects the interior of the furnace from dust and debris that comes through the return air ducts. An excessively dirty filter will block airflow into the furnace, and this will often lead to the furnace overheating because not enough heat is transferring to the air. When the furnace overheats, it will trip a limit switch and shut itself off. Put in a clean filter to see if this helps. (Even if it doesn’t, you need a clean filter in there anyway.)
Check the gas line to the furnace
If you have a gas furnace, check to see if the valve on its gas line is fully open. Sometimes this valve may become stuck. Don’t attempt anything more complicated with the gas line than this—that’s a job for professionals.
Still have a non-working furnace? Just reach out to us and we’ll see the problem is fixed.
Dewees HVAC proudly serves the Conway area. Call us when you need furnace repairs.