When you have a heating or cooling system installed in your home, you’d like to think it’s the last one you’ll ever need to purchase. Perhaps it will run forever and you’ll only need to have it repaired on occasion.
This isn’t reality, of course, and you know it. One day you’ll have to replace the boiler that warms your home through the winter. But how long can you expect that boiler to run efficiently and effectively?
We can help answer this question and give you some perspective on when a boiler replacement is the best option.
A piece of advice we often give to people who ask about ways they can save on their heating during the summer is to know how to set their thermostat from maximum efficiency. It’s best to keep a thermostat at a steady setting during the day, usually around 68°F, and then lower it by 8°F during the evening, or when people are away. This saves more energy than moving the thermostat up and down as you alternatively feel hot and then cold. This creates too much stopping and starting for the heating system, which wastes energy. The thermostat is a switch, not a throttle, so pushing it up higher doesn’t get you faster heating, only a heating system that runs longer.
As the cold weather continues to deepen, you’ll rely on your central heating system more and more until it will run during most of the day. You expect your heater will keep your family comfortable—that’s why you installed it, after all. But you might find as the winter starts that the house isn’t warming up the way you expect it to. You set the thermostat at the standard temperature for comfort in the house, but people are complaining that it’s too cold and they’re starting to layer up their sweaters or even wearing parkas around the house.
When you look at the calendar and see the word October, you know the time is counting down until the first cold day of the season arrives. If you feel confident in your current furnace and you’ve already planned on scheduling heating maintenance (or have already got it done), then you won’t have much to worry about when the cold strikes.
You’ve turned on your air conditioner at least once this season, and you can expect it to remain running during most days for the near future. That can make it extra worrying if the AC already appears to be having problems. This happens sometimes: an air conditioner begins the summer seasons a few steps behind. It may be a minor issue—or the air conditioning system may soon be many steps behind and in danger of failing when you need it the most. 
If you’ve been through at least one spring in Ohio, you know that the season is never a guarantee the cold weather will vanish for good. Cold snaps can continue to happen even into June. You never know when you’ll need to have your furnace or boiler running again. This is why you shouldn’t shut down either for the season until the summer weather has well and truly arrived.
People enjoy a fresh start at the beginning of the year. You may be thinking that a new start is what you need for your home heating. You have an old furnace that you think isn’t living up to its old standards. It sounds like a good reason to have a new furnace installed, and there are many excellent options on the market for a high-efficiency heating unit.
Furnace manufacturers design their heating products for durability and dependability. But at the same time, furnaces are complex devices and they can suffer from a range of malfunctions during their service lives. These troubles can be kept to a minimum through regular heating maintenance, but nothing can prevent all possible problems. And no problem with a natural gas furnace is more concerning, and more in need of a speedy response, than a cracked heat exchanger.
If you’re in the market for a new air conditioning system, it’s important to rely on expert technicians for the installation. Air conditioning experts will make sure that your new system is properly and safely installed, and that it operates smoothly for a long time to come. It’s not worth it to trust installation to an amateur, who may be unable to make sure the electrical connections and refrigerant are set properly, which could result in major damages.
The thermostat is the only part of the heating and air conditioning systems you really interact with. So by now, you may have gotten used to the settings or perhaps the little peculiarities of the controls. Many people keep the same thermostat around for years, even after major