For many, fall is a favorite time of year—the warm tones of the changing leaves, the pastime of family and friends gathered to cheer on beloved football teams and crisp, cool evenings. It’s also a good time to prepare for the frigid temperatures that will follow this much-anticipated pleasant weather the next few months bring.
In order to prep your home for the dropping temperatures, consider performing the following fall checklist:
- Program your thermostat to automatically turn down at night, perhaps scheduling the temperature to be set back a couple of degrees half an hour after you typically go to bed and turn back up half an hour before you get up in the morning. These adjustments can save between 5-7 percent on heating costs. Jennings offers several energy saving thermostats as well as remote access thermostats which can be monitored on your smart phone via an app. To view some of the available smart thermostats click here.
- Call for Jennings’ furnace clean and check. Servicing your furnace will typically pay for itself in energy savings throughout the winter, as well as extend the life of your comfort system.
- It’s always a good idea to check your furnace filter about now-should you schedule a furnace clean and check with us, our technician can do this for you while he is there.
- Keep leaves and branches that fall during this time of year away from and off of the outside air conditioning unit. To do so, you can cover the top of your air conditioner as long as you remember to remove this before restarting your unit in the spring. What is not recommended is wrapping the entire air conditioner in plastic as completely enclosing the unit can trap in moisture and cause the unit to corrode.
While you are checking items for cold weather preparation you might also want to check the following:
- Carbon monoxide and smoke detectors to ensure they have good battery life.
- Take a look at your gutters periodically to make sure they are clear of leaves and debris as they tend to get clogged this time of year.
- Later in the fall, make sure that the outside water faucets are shut to prevent them from freezing.
- Change the oil in your snow blower.
In recent years, Jennings has seen an increased demand for standby generators. Many customers like the peace of mind that an automatic standby generator can provide given that, during a power outage, the standby generator senses the power interruption and automatically turns on. Some customers want just enough backup power to run essentials such as the furnace, refrigerator and lights, while others want to have enough standby power to keep all the appliances on during a winter storm. If you would like a no obligation whole house backup power survey you can give us a call to schedule a time for Jennings’ Generator Specialist, Tim, to come out to provide an in-home survey and estimate. Tim will be able to calculate which system would meet your family’s needs.
It may sound like you have a lot to check-off of the home comfort system prep list right now, but there is plenty of time left in this enjoyable fall season to cross off a few items each week.
Mike Foraker
President & CEO
Jennings Heating & Cooling
