Blog Category
Heating Articles
Heating articles for Oklahoma City homeowners and businesses.
Heating articles
Why Is My Furnace Blowing Cool Air? Common Causes for Oklahoma City Homes
A furnace blowing cool air most often comes down to one of four things: the thermostat fan is set to ON instead of AUTO, a clogged filter is causing the burners to overheat and shut off, the flame sensor is dirty and killing the flame seconds after ignition, or the furnace has locked out on a safety control. The fan setting is the only one a homeowner should handle. If you smell gas or burning at any point, leave the house first and call 911 or your gas utility from outside.
Read more
Furnace Repair or Replacement? How to Decide for an Oklahoma City Home
Repair usually makes sense when the furnace is under roughly ten years old, the failure is a single component, and it has not needed repeated service. Replacement moves ahead of repair when the unit is well into its second decade, when repairs are stacking up season after season, or when a technician documents a cracked heat exchanger or a failed safety control. A cracked heat exchanger is the one finding that ends the debate: that furnace should be shut down, not patched.
Read more
Getting Your Heat Ready Before the Next Oklahoma Cold Front
The single most useful thing you can do before an Oklahoma cold front is run your heat for fifteen minutes a week before you need it, not the night it arrives. Set the thermostat about five degrees above room temperature, let the system run a full cycle, and pay attention to smells, noises, and whether every room actually gets warm air. A furnace that fails that test in mild weather is a scheduled repair; the same furnace failing at 2 a.m. in a hard freeze is a much worse day.
Read more
Furnace Won't Turn On or Won't Ignite? What to Check and What to Leave Alone
Before anything else: if you smell gas, leave the house immediately and call 911 or your gas utility from outside. Otherwise, a furnace that won't turn on most commonly traces back to a thermostat set wrong or with dead batteries, a tripped breaker, a furnace power switch someone flipped off, a blower door that isn't latched, or a clogged filter that tripped a safety. Those five are safe for a homeowner to check. Ignition components, the gas valve, and anything involving wiring are not.
Read more
Heat Pump vs. Gas Furnace in Oklahoma City: An Honest Comparison
Here's the part most comparison pages skip: in Oklahoma, where natural gas is inexpensive, a heat pump is generally not going to beat a gas furnace on the cost of producing a unit of heat. The heat pump's honest advantage is different - it's one piece of outdoor equipment that both heats and cools, so you're maintaining and eventually replacing one system instead of two. If you're replacing an aging furnace and an aging AC at the same time, that's the comparison that actually matters. If your furnace is fine and only the AC has failed, the math looks very different.
Read more
Furnace Noises: What’s Normal and What Isn’t
Most furnace noise is a mechanical problem that gets worse and more expensive if you wait, but three sounds deserve immediate action: a loud boom or bang when the burners light, metal-on-metal scraping while the blower runs, and a rumble that continues after the furnace has shut off. Turn the system off at the thermostat for those three and get it looked at. A booming ignition and a post-shutdown rumble can both point to combustion problems, which is the category where carbon monoxide lives.
Read more
How Often Does a Heating System Actually Need Maintenance?
A gas furnace should be checked once a year, ideally in early fall before you need it. A heat pump is a different animal - it runs in both seasons, so it accumulates roughly twice the runtime and warrants a check twice a year, before heating season and before cooling season. Filters are separate from all of this and are on their own schedule, usually every one to three months depending on the filter and your household.
Read more
Why Your Heat Pump Steams and Shuts Off During an Oklahoma Ice Storm
If your heat pump is steaming, making a loud whoosh, and briefly blowing cooler air indoors during an ice storm, that's almost certainly the defrost cycle doing exactly what it was designed to do. The unit reverses itself for a few minutes to melt frost off the outdoor coil, then goes back to heating. What is not normal: a solid block of ice encasing the whole unit, ice that never clears through multiple cycles, or the unit sitting in standing water or under a dripping roofline.
Read moreNeed Heating or Air Conditioning Help in Oklahoma City?
Tell Serrato Heat and Air what your system is doing, what type of property you have, and the best way to reach you.