the furnace came on this week, which in western new york means the next bill is going to be a surprise and everybody is going to blame the utility.
some of it is the utility. a real chunk of it is that your house is trying to push air through things that are full.
i am in other people’s houses for a living, and the pattern is boring and consistent: the mechanical stuff in a house does not usually break. it clogs. a clogged system does not stop working, which is the whole problem — it keeps working, badly, for months, and you pay for the difference every single month without ever getting a single symptom you would call a symptom.
the filter, and the reason nobody changes it
ask ten people when they last changed their furnace filter and you get one confident answer and nine faces. it is not laziness. it is that the filter is in a metal slot in a basement nobody goes into, it has a size printed on it in small numbers, and nobody wants to buy the wrong one.
so: go read the size off the edge of the one that is in there right now, before you buy anything. it is printed on the cardboard frame, something like 16x25x1. filters are sold as one listing per size, which is the single most common way people order the wrong thing online — that link is a 16x25x1 four-pack, and if your slot is a 20x25x1 it will not fit and you will be annoyed at me. a four-pack is roughly a year.
what a loaded filter actually does is restrict airflow. the blower has to work against the restriction, the system runs longer to move the same amount of heat, and in the bad cases it short-cycles or trips a limit switch and you end up calling somebody. i want to be honest about the numbers, though: the specific percentages that get quoted for filter changes are soft and depend enormously on how clogged it was and what kind of system you have. what is solid is the direction and the arithmetic. a filter is a few dollars. a service call is not.
higher MERV numbers catch finer particles and also restrict more airflow, so more filtration is not automatically better for the machine. mid-range is the usual sensible answer unless somebody in the house has a specific reason to want more.
and while you are down there: the return-air grille, the one big vent that pulls air in, is almost always furry. a damp microfiber cloth across the grille and the floor registers is thirty seconds of work on the same restriction problem. that one is genuinely what i buy — the automotive aisle sells the same cloths cheaper than the cleaning aisle does.
the myth that costs people money on purpose
closing the vents in rooms you do not use. everybody has heard this one and it feels obviously correct: heat fewer rooms, pay for less heat.
it mostly does not work that way. a forced-air system was balanced for the whole house. close a bunch of registers and you raise the pressure in the ductwork, which pushes more air out through every leaky joint in the system — and most ductwork leaks somewhere. the blower does not politely use less energy because you gave it less to do. in some setups you also drop the airflow across the heat exchanger far enough to cause real problems.
close one register in one room, fine. closing half the house is a project that costs you money to do.
the dryer, which is the other thing running on restricted air
the reason the dryer belongs in a heating-season post is that it is the same failure: a machine pushing air through something packed, running twice as long to finish, and billing you for the extra run every load.
the lint screen is not the vent. the screen catches the lint that got caught. everything that got past it is in the duct between your dryer and the outside wall, and i went through the four signs your duct is packed in its own post, because this one is also a genuine fire hazard and not only a money one.
the short money version. a long skinny lint brush goes down the slot the screen came out of, which is a pocket that collects a startling amount and that basically nobody has ever cleaned. a vent brush with a vacuum attachment handles the first few feet behind the machine. for a full run to the outside vent you need a flexible rod kit, which is the one that feels like overkill until you see what comes out. i have not used these specific brands; they are the versions with the ratings behind them, and the job matters more than the brand does here.
two parts worth replacing while you are back there, and this is the bit where the cheap thing is the right thing. the flexible hose behind the dryer should be semi-rigid or foil transition duct, not the white plastic accordion kind, which is the one that gets crushed flat behind the machine and is not rated for this. and seal the joints with UL 181 foil tape — that specification is the entire reason i am naming it, not reviews. actual cloth duct tape is not for ducts; it dries out and lets go. no screws pointing into the duct either, because lint catches on them.
the free one: your thermostat is reading dry air
heating season drops indoor humidity hard, and dry air at 70 feels cooler than humid air at 70, because you lose heat faster when moisture is evaporating off you. so people nudge the thermostat up a degree, and then another one, chasing a feeling that is not actually a temperature problem.
putting some moisture back means the same comfort at a lower setting. a cool-mist humidifier in the room you actually sit in is the cheap way in — and the target is roughly 30 to 50 percent, not as much as possible, because above that you start growing things in the corners. clean it, genuinely, on the schedule in the manual. a dirty humidifier is a worse problem than dry air.
it is also, incidentally, why everyone’s kids start waking up more in october — dry air, not a cold baby, most of the time.
what this adds up to
a filter, two brushes, a length of duct and a roll of tape is not a hundred dollars of stuff, and it is a saturday morning, not a project. i have written before about how these same chores keep repair bills away. this is the other half of it: the bill that shows up every month whether anything breaks or not.
one honest limit. none of this touches insulation, windows, or a furnace that is genuinely old, and airflow maintenance will not rescue a system at the end of its life. if you smell gas, if the furnace is short-cycling, or if anything is sooty, that is a licensed person, today — and if you do not have a working carbon monoxide alarm on every floor, buy one before you buy anything in this post. i am not linking one, because that is a thing you should pick on certification and replacement date rather than on a link from me.
and if your house also smells like something when the heat comes on, that is a separate and very solvable thing — it is usually four places, and none of them are the air freshener aisle.
some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means i may earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. i am a Walmart Creator partner. the microfiber cloths are what i actually buy for my own company; the rest are chosen on ratings, or in the case of the foil tape on a printed specification, and i have said which is which next to each one. #ad
want the whole year of these on one page? the Cheap Chore Calendar is a two-page printable of the maintenance jobs that cost under twenty dollars and quietly prevent the expensive version, sorted by season. free, with the rest of the printables in the resource library.
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