It’s Halloween Season! Everyone is putting up their decorations and starting to bake those yummy pumpkin pies and muffins. Whether you’re into scary movies and frightening props, or you just like the cozy nature of the season’s weather, we’d like to officially welcome you into the spooky season.
What’s not nice, however, is when your furnace makes some weird or strange sounds during the night. Nothing can feel quite as disturbing as watching a scary movie for the spooky season only to be woken up in the middle of the night by a boom or a ding that comes from your furnace. What gives?
Well, we can’t give you a thorough diagnosis unless you call us to schedule furnace repair in Colorado Springs, CO. But what we can do is tell you about three of the most common noises that furnaces make, and why they’re so bad.
The Furnace Boom
The classic boom before a furnace starts up is more common of a noise than you think, but it’s still not a good sign. If you’re awoken by a boom in your furnace as it starts up, then it’s only a matter of time before it runs into serious problems.
A booming furnace is caused by dirty or gunked up gas fuel injectors that won’t properly ignite. As the system gets older, it can get coated in thin layers of soot, dirt, ash, and dust, that can cause the gas injectors to irregularly send gas into the combustion chamber. This causes a momentary pause with ignition as gas pools up in corners of the chamber.
Once the ignition meets the gas, it all combusts together in a small explosion (which is the boom you can hear) and the furnace starts working properly. This little explosion, however, is very bad for the system. It deteriorates sensitive components over time and causes more friction which reduces the structural integrity of your furnace.
The Creeping Clicking
Every time your furnace turns on, it should make a clicking sound. That’s pretty regular. What isn’t regular is a constant clicking sound. Constant clicking can usually signify that there’s an electrical disturbance somewhere between your thermostat and your furnace.
Think about it–your thermostat is sending signals to the furnace that it’s too cold and it needs to turn on, and that should just come with one simple click, which is the capacitor telling the system to start. However, if there are multiple clicking noises before the system starts up, the capacitor could be failing, or a wire could be frayed connecting the thermostat to the system, meaning it has to try multiple times to get going.
This will likely get worse unless it gets fixed by a professional.
Rattling and Shaking
Rattling and shaking are pretty classic sounds that a furnace can make, but they’re just as bad as the sounds we mentioned above. These can usually come from a component that’s either misaligned or loose in the system, as it rattles and shakes around the unit’s housing.
Only a licensed professional should open your furnace up and find the loose part.
Contact SoCo Heating and Cooling today to schedule service. So Cool. So Cozy.