If your furnace isn’t working, that’s an emergency situation, but it doesn’t have to mean an expensive emergency call. There are plenty of things that can go wrong with heating equipment that you can diagnose on your own. Often a tripped breaker is all that is wrong. Here’s what we suggest you do before calling us at Smoky Mountain Heating & Air.

• The first thing to do is to check that your thermostat is working and set to a high enough temperature to ignite the furnace. If there is no display, the battery powered thermostat may just need a battery replacement to get it functioning again.
• Next, check the breaker box and the on/off switch on the furnace unit itself. If they are on, try cycling them once to see if this fixes the system.
• If you have an oil furnace, make sure to have oil in your tank.
• Depending on the type of furnace that you have, there may be a problem with the ignition system; either the pilot light has gone out or the glow plug is not working properly or the ignition transformer may be bad or electrodes may be out of adjustment. Testing and replacement should be handled by a professional.
• In a gas furnace, the draft inducer is another possible problem point. If you can see the glow plug lighting up and turning red hot but there isn’t a whooshing sound within about 30 seconds, the draft inducer isn’t blowing gas into the burn chamber. This is another issue for a professional repairman.
• If none of the previous are true, the actual ignition switch may be shutting off too soon. This could be due to an improperly calibrated thermostat, gas pressure problem or oil pump or supply problem.

If you still aren’t sure what is wrong with your heating system, please calls us at Smoky Mountain Heating & Air. We’ll get the heat back on in your Asheville-area home in short order.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Asheville, North Carolina and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).

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