A broken down furnace is a problem that no homeowner or family wants to face, right? Unfortunately, it happens! It’s a lot less likely to happen if you keep on top of your annual maintenance appointments. Furnace maintenance tune-ups enable our professionals to thoroughly inspect your system inside and out, comprehensively clean it, and make adjustments as needed.
These steps help your furnace operate as effectively and efficiently as possible, for as long as possible. Additionally, it prevents small repair needs from turning into major breakdowns. We’re going to make the assumption though, that if you came across this blog post that your furnace is out of service, and you need some tips to stay warm! Give our team a call, and while you wait for our techs to show up to conduct reliable repairs, follow these clever and fun tips to stay warm:
Move Your Body!
Seriously. As silly as it sounds, maybe do some lunges in the hallway, or have a dance party! This is a fun and easy way to get your body temperature up and forget about your furnace troubles for a little bit. This is an especially fun one if you have small kids in the household. Goodness knows you already work up quite a sweat chasing them around, right? May as well make it fun.
Put away those breakables, push the furniture against the wall to avoid injury, play some upbeat music, and dance away.
Block Out Drafts
Do you have caulking on hand? This is the best way to permanently seal up drafty windows or door jams. Pick the smallest room in your home, and/or the room with the lowest ceiling (the smaller the room, the easier it is to keep warm) and block out those drafts.
If you don’t have caulking on hand, that’s okay! Not many homeowners do. Instead, grab some pillows, blankets, towels, etc. and use those to bock off your windows and doors.
Get Cooking
First let us start by saying, turning on cookware such as your oven or stovetop should never be used as a primary alternative to using your heating system. This can be hazardous, particularly if you have a gas-powered range. It’s too easy to forget you have it on, and this can lead to carbon monoxide exposure or fire risk.
But we definitely do encourage cooking or baking! You can make fun cookies with the kids, or cook a hot stew to enjoy during a cold week, and in the process naturally warm up your home.
Use Those Incandescent Light Bulbs
Do you still have incandescent light bulbs in drawers or closets around your home? Look, this isn’t a blog post about how to be more energy efficient. While we do have plenty of great tips for that, this is a post about staying warm!
Incandescent lighting will help you do just that. While LED lighting is great for reducing your energy use, it simply doesn’t add heat to the room the way that incandescent bulbs do. At least until our techs get there to fix your heater, replace those LED bulbs with incandescent, and improve your situation a bit.
Reach out to Cool Care Heating and Air Conditioning for expert HVAC service in Houston, TX.