With proper maintenance, a furnace can serve you for decades, heating up your home during cold days without any hitch.
However, without adequate care, your home heating system is prone to frequent unexpected breakdowns, especially during those days when you are so broke that you cannot even afford to pay a technician to fix it.
If you are smart enough, a failure of your furnace should not catch you unawares. That’s because there are certain symptoms that a furnace system, which is about to fail will exhibit. One of them is a myriad of unusual noises. Is your furnace making these ominous noises? Another symptom is unrelated to furnace noise, but related to how the furnace behaves when started (lit up).
1. Grinding Noise
A grinding noise coming from your furnace can almost certainly mean one thing—that the bearings preventing friction around your furnace’s air handler motor component have become too worn out to prevent the physical force effectively. If you do not replace your bearings, the force could completely destroy the motor, causing your furnace to stop working.
2. Booming Noise
Of all the unusual noises that may come out of a furnace, especially a gas furnace, you should not ignore this one. A booming sound is likely as a result of a delayed ignition in the burner component of your furnace. The ignition delay is normally caused by an excessive buildup of carbon particles on the jets, originating from suit. Consequently, the jets may not be able to ignite simultaneously like in the normal case scenario. Jets that end up igniting late are therefore forced to burn through a large amount of gas instantly and that creates a booming sound.
3. Short-Cycling Behavior
Short-cycling in the furnace context refers to when a furnace will start-up only for a brief moment, rapidly shut off before quickly starting up again. You should not ignore this behavior when you notice it with your furnace as it may signify a clogged air filter, malfunctioning air handler, or electrical fault. Needless to mention any other technical fault that may result in heat getting trapped within the furnace.
Final Thoughts
Grinding noise, booming noise, and a short-cycling behavior are the three most common symptoms to look out for in a faulty furnace system that is about to malfunction. While some of these problems are easy to fix without bringing in a technician, most need to be handled by a trained technician who knows what he does. For instance, you can safely clean the interior of your furnace, getting rid of piled up carbon particles to ensure your system does not make a booming noise anymore.
However, you should not attempt to open your air handler compartment in an effort to replace worn out bearings hoping to prevent friction on the rotating part of the motor. Neither should you attempt to fix the short-cycling behavior by yourself, if it persists even after cleaning your furnace. If you are currently having any of these furnace malfunctions or want to ensure that you never have any loss of heat please call us today 215-366-1001 we are Philadelphia top HVAC service.