Avoid a Damaged Furnace When Renovating Your Home
Be proactive when renovating your home to ensure you don’t end up with a renovated home, but a severely damaged furnace.
As homeowners, we all dream of renovating our homes to tailor them to our own tastes, needs, and to create the ideal home for our families and ourselves. You put a lot of money into your home renovation, so why spend even more money on repairing your furnace because of a few mistakes you make during renovation (damaged furnace).
Home renovations are often the main culprit of a broken or damaged furnace. Any construction that’s being done to your home results in an excess of debris and dust which often makes its way into your duct system, and thus into your furnace system. This excess of dust and debris means that your furnace is at a likely chance of overheating, debris-covered safety components, or ignition malfunctions.
There’s an abundance of furnace problems that can come with home renovations, but there’s a few rather simple ways that you can avoid them through proactive thinking and action.
Talk to a professional HVAC technician
It’s well worth your time to contact an HVAC technician while you’re planning out your home renovation to confirm whether or not your home’s current heating and cooling system will work with your renovation plans and that it won’t have a negative impact on your home’s HVAC system.
Keep dust and debris outdoors
It’s common knowledge that home renovations create an unavoidable mess. Though this is the case, it’s often possible to keep a lot of this mess outside of the home. The last thing you want is a damaged furnace as a result of all the sawdust in your ducts and furnace.
Isolate the messy areas and protect the vents
We understand that oftentimes, not ALL of the mess can be kept outdoors, luckily there are some precautions you can take when the inside of your home sees some dirt and dust during home renovations. Our first tip is to place up plastic tarps around the perimeter of the dirty area, so that the dirt and dust stays in that area. Our second tip in this situation is to cover the vents in the dirty area by closing them or by placing any impermeable material over it. When covering the ducts make sure to not cover every duct in your home as this would not allow for proper air circulation and could lead to a damaged furnace.
Take time to clean around the house as often as necessary
We’ve already established that your home is often at it’s dirtiest during renovation. It’s only logical that this would mean that you should clean around the home more often than usual to prevent dust and debris from spreading all around the house.
We recommend that during renovations you vacuum and clean up dust around the house once every 1-2 days. This will tremendously lower the chances of having a damaged furnace post-renovations, and will simultaneously create a safe and sanitary environment in your living space.
Change the furnace filter
A dirty and clogged furnace filter is often the root to many furnace problems. A clogged furnace filter will lead to your furnace overworking itself and the heat exchanger potentially overheating. Your furnace will get especially dirty during renovation, so it’s crucially important that you check up on it frequently and change it when you notice an excess level of dirt and dust in the filter.
The general rule of thumb for furnace filters is to change them once a month, but it may be necessary to change it more frequently during home renovation.
Shut the furnace down
It’s best to keep your furnace shut down while renovations are being done. When air isn’t circulating through the ducts there will be less debris and dust in the system, and a smaller chance of a damaged furnace.
Have a professional clean your duct system post-renovation
Even after taking the necessary precautions it’s likely that your duct system will have some level of dirt and dust due to your home renovations. Post-renovations is the best time to for duct cleaning in your home and will leave you worry free about the state of your furnace system and will allow you to enjoy your newly renovated home in comfort.
If you have any further questions about your furnace and home renovation or any of your other HVAC needs, don’t hesitate to contact DeMark Home Ontario to find the answers. If you have a damaged furnace, we provide quick and efficient furnace service and replacement performed by our highly experienced and trained technicians. Give us a call at 647-847-2998 or fill out online request form and we will be happy to assist you with your request.
