When you heat with gas, whether it's your hot water or your furnace, regular routine maintenance helps ensure that your home and its occupants remain healthy and safe. Failing to maintain your system can lead to serious health problems, including respiratory issues, carbon monoxide exposure and similar concerns. Here are some issues that routine heater maintenance can help prevent:
Health Issues from Poor Heater Maintenance
- Carbon Monoxide Poisoning. This is probably the most severe problem that can happen in your home from burning natural gas or propane. Caused by poor combustion and inadequate ventilation, it can cause headaches, nausea and death. Though having a good carbon monoxide detector helps prevent the problem from becoming too serious, it's far better to get the necessary maintenance on your system to keep it running properly in the first place.
- Poor Indoor Air Quality. When your system hasn't been properly maintained, the air filter can build up dust, debris and mold, clogging it and causing your system to draw in more particulates, which become part of your indoor air. This can worsen a wide range of respiratory issues, including allergies and asthma, which can then cause additional problems such as pneumonia and respiratory infections.
- Temperature Changes. When your furnace isn't being regularly maintained, it can have problems maintaining a regular temperature. Though temperature changes can't technically make you sick directly, it can wear you down and cause your immune system to weaken, leaving you vulnerable to whatever diseases happen to come along and take over.
- Breakdowns. When your furnace breaks down from poor repair and maintenance, it can create a lot of stress. Suddenly, instead of just worrying about the other issues going on in your life, you need to sort out keeping your home warm enough to prevent pipes from freezing and other damage caused when your home freezes up. This stress is bad for your health, exacerbating any number of other conditions.
With these very serious health issues the result of not properly maintaining your heater, you can see how important it is to keep your heater maintained. If your system's maintenance is behind and needs help, please contact us. Stahl Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning has been providing the best quality service and most highly trained technical support to our area for over 50 years and is ready to help solve your burner problems.