Furnace Maintenance

A gas furnace burns fuel inside your home. A cracked heat exchanger, a plugged flue, or a failed safety switch can let combustion byproducts — including carbon monoxide — into the living space. Annual maintenance verifies the combustion path and the safety interlocks are working before you rely on the system all winter.

Fall, before the first real cold snap. A furnace that hasn't run in six months can have a dust-fouled burner, a stuck flame sensor, or a weak igniter — all things better found in October than at 6 a.m. on the coldest Tuesday of the year.

Yes. Most manufacturers require annual professional maintenance as a condition of keeping their equipment coverage in force, and new furnaces still have wearing parts — flame sensors, igniters, condensate traps on high-efficiency models — that benefit from a yearly check.

In our usage they overlap — a tune-up is the hands-on cleaning and calibration portion; maintenance is the full annual visit that includes the tune-up plus the safety inspections and the written summary of system condition.