You’ve crawled out of bed to find that the house is cold. The weather just broke yesterday and a cold front moved in for the first time this year and you kicked your heater on and you went to bed. This morning, it’s cold in your home and you don’t know why.
Obviously, your home heater isn’t working and this is not the best way to find out. In many cases, you could have easily prevented the need for heating system repairs by keeping up with maintenance. However, if you’re in the midst of an issue already, there are some simple ways you can troubleshoot your issues.
Start by Checking Your Thermostat
It might be that you simply forgot to switch your thermostat to the ‘on’ position. Perhaps you have turned it to on forgot to move the other settings to ‘heat’ and you’ve been sleeping all night while your air conditioner stood by, waiting to kick on if it got warmer than 70-degrees inside your home that is now 58-degrees instead?
Double-check all of your thermostat’s settings and ensure that you’ve got the temperature set correctly and your switches are set to ‘auto’ and ‘heat’ and if this doesn’t work, move on to the next troubleshooting that you can do.
Are Your Circuit Breakers Flipped?
It could have simply triggered your breaker for some reason in the middle of the night. When this happens, your heater stops working but everything else in the house continues to work fine so you’ll have no clue until you wake-up cold, as you did this morning.
Simply flip the breaker back to the on position. Then go check your heater settings again and make sure that everything is set correctly. It may be wise to replace the breaker if you continue to have issues with it popping off.
You may have a bad breaker or another issue. Removing the breaker switch is easy enough and if you examine it, you may see the problem with the breaker itself and simply replacing it might solve the problem. On the other hand, if you’re not comfortable with checking a breaker, an electrician will be happy to come out and check it and replace it if that is necessary.
Check for Blown Fuses
These are the types of fuses that screw into place in an old knob and tube style wiring system. Older homes that haven’t had any updates since they were built may still have knob and tube wiring.
There is a clear panel on the top of these fuses and if it is blown, you’ll be able to see a dark color, as if it literally has been burned inside. You should also be able to see that the wire inside that is normally connected has become separated.
The circuit is no longer complete and you’ll need to unscrew that old fuse and put a new one of the correct amp size in to replace it. This is a five-minute fix that will cost you a few dollars for the fuse. It’s really important that you check all of these things and take these steps before you call out an HVAC person to your home.
They will likely ask you if you’ve checked these things when you call them. If none of this is the issue, you’ll want to go ahead and call our heating experts at HRC Climate Services so we can come out and have a look at your heating unit.
