Getting Your Heating System Through a New Hampshire Winter

Every year we get the same rush of calls during the first real cold snap. Most of them are for problems that were already there in September, sitting quietly in a system nobody had run since March.

The work below is worth doing in October. A failure found in October is an appointment. The same failure found in January is an emergency call, at emergency rates, behind everybody else who also waited.

Run it before you need it

The single most valuable thing on this list, and the one people skip.

Pick a cool day in early fall, turn the heat up ten degrees, and let the system run for a half hour. Then go stand next to it and pay attention.

You are checking that it fires, that it comes up to temperature, that every zone or room actually gets warm, and that it does not make a noise it did not used to make. Anything wrong now is a scheduled repair.

While you are at it, walk the whole house and touch every register or baseboard. It is easy to not notice a cold room in October and very hard to ignore it in January.

Filters

Replace it going into the season. If you have a heat pump running most of the winter, plan to check it monthly through the heating season rather than seasonally, because it will load up faster than you expect.

Clear the equipment

Heat pumps and outdoor units. Two feet of clearance all around. Cut back anything that grew in over the summer. Think about where snow comes off the roof and where the plow throws it, and make a plan that is not “deal with it in February.”

Make sure the unit is up off the ground on its stand and that meltwater can drain away rather than refreezing under it.

Sidewall vents. High efficiency furnaces and boilers vent through PVC out the side of the house. Those pipes have to stay clear. Snow drifts and ice from a roofline above are the two things that block them, and a blocked vent shuts the appliance down as a safety response. Know where yours are, and check them after every significant storm.

Chimneys and flues. If you burn oil or have an older gas appliance on a masonry chimney, get it inspected. Blockages happen, including nests.

Fuel

Fill the tank in the fall. Check the gauge and know how to read it.

If you have a propane tank, get on a scheduled delivery or at least know your supplier’s minimum. Running out during a cold snap means waiting behind everyone else who also ran out, and on propane it also means a pressure test and a relight before you get heat back.

Get it serviced

Annual service on a fuel burning appliance is a safety item, not just a performance one. Combustion analysis, heat exchanger inspection, cleaning, and safety control testing are not things you can do yourself.

On a heat pump, fall service is the one that matters most in this climate, because heating is the harder duty here.

Book it in September or early October. By November the schedule is full.

Carbon monoxide and smoke detectors

Test them. Replace batteries. Check the manufacture date on the units themselves, because CO detectors have a service life, typically seven to ten years, after which they need replacing regardless of whether they still beep when you press the button.

If you have any fuel burning appliance, you want a working CO detector on every level of the house. This is the cheapest safety item you will buy all year.

Thermostats

Change batteries. Check the schedule for anything set months ago and forgotten.

If you have a heat pump, this is the moment to think about how you run it. Deep overnight setbacks work against a heat pump, because recovering from a big drop pulls in backup electric heat, which is the expensive way to warm the house. Pick a steady temperature and hold it.

Plumbing

Disconnect the hoses. Every fall, no exceptions. It is the most common freeze we see and it takes two minutes.

Know where the main shutoff is and confirm it turns.

Insulate pipe in unheated space, and air seal the drafts near it, which matters more than the insulation on its own.

Going away

If the house will be empty, do not set the thermostat to 50. Sixty is a sensible floor. Have somebody check on it. For a longer absence, shut the water off at the main and drain the system.

A house with the heat off in January can freeze pipes in about a day. The savings from a deep setback do not come close to the cost of that.

The honest summary

Run it in October, change the filter, clear the vents and the outdoor unit, book a service, test the CO detectors, and take the hoses off. That is most of the value on this list and it is an afternoon.