With winter just around the corner in Minnesota, having a working furnace is imperative to getting through the cold weather. It is because of this that heating and cooling specialists recommend yearly maintenance for furnace units.

“Always be prepared for the upcoming season,” said Penny Arens, co-owner of Arens Heating & Cooling in Austin. “We recommend yearly maintenance for any unit. For a brand new unit, you can probably wait two years after it’s installed, but it is most important for filters and drain hoses (to be taken care of).”

According to Arens, the company receives anywhere from five to 15 calls per day during the cold season from people having heating issues. One problem is drain hose blockage, as a lot of air conditioning drain hoses and furnace drain hoses are either combined or meet in the middle and head to a common drain.

“That’s normally where we find things plugged up,” Arens said. “If the drain hose is not clear, you won’t get many more heat cycles out of it and then it’ll stop. That’s actually a good thing because it prevents the water from backing up in through the furnace and causing a need for maintenance and replacement parts, which are costly.”

But drain hoses aren’t the only furnace feature subject to blockage. Intake and exhaust pipes can also be blocked.

“Most furnaces these days don’t go up the chimney; they go up the sidewall, so you should keep an eye on the intake and exhaust pipes and make sure everything is intact,” Arens said. “You don’t want to have anything in front of them. Even screens should not be in front as they can freeze over and block the pipe. Pipes can also get ice on them or snow that comes up to the top. Snow will have to be cleared away. We’ll recommend to people, if we can’t get there for a few hours, take a tape measure, shove it in there and wiggle it around. If you do have a complete blockage of light, fluffy snow, sometimes they can get it opened up before we get there.”

For homeowners, making sure their furnace is working adequately is as simple as regularly changing the filters and having an annual inspection conducted. Arens said technicians look for how the unit has been maintained, check all of the safeties and make sure the inside gets cleaned, particularly the blower wheels, which can burn out the motor if they get too dirty.

Like many household appliances, the older furnaces get, the more issues can occur.

“There are issues with furnaces that get to a certain age,” Arens said. “You can get condensation and rusting in heat exchangers. If anybody gets a foul smell, like a rotten egg smell, the first thing I tell them to do is shut it off and walk outside to look at that fresh air intake and exhaust. Is it brown? Is it black? If so, that’s not good. If those white pipes are showing discoloration or there is any smell at all, they need to call the heating technician to come out and do an inspection.”

Arens recommends getting an inspection done before severe cold weather hits.

“We do run into having a bit of a waiting period, so we’re not going to be able to accommodate everybody as quickly as they may want,” she said. “That’s our only issue. It’s human nature for people to wait until it gets cold to turn (the heat) on and sometimes they assume if it worked fine last year, of course it will start right up. Sometimes that doesn’t happen.”