It’s the season for scary movies and falling leaves, which is the best season for a lot of people. While you’re cuddled up with the family watching some midnight horror movies, or if you’re baking a delicious pumpkin pie, you might want to be wary of some spooky noises that you notice on your own!
In all seriousness, furnaces are supposed to work behind the scenes. You might hear a click, and a gentle “whoosh” as air moves from the system to the vents in your rooms, but that’s basically it. Anything more than that and you might have a problem on your hands.
Of course, it’s impossible to completely diagnose a problem with a blog post. But we want to empower our customers to do a little detective work when finding out if they need heating repair in Waterloo, IA, or if the sound was just a one-time thing.
1. Grinding
Grinding is never a good noise, no matter where it’s coming from. Grinding usually comes from two metal components making contact, like the fan blades of your blower system rubbing up against the housing. Grinding can perhaps be the easiest sound to notice because it’s so disturbing, but it often time is like that for a reason.
If your fan blades are starting to deteriorate due to friction, then it’s only a matter of time before your blower system either shuts down or ruins the efficiency of your furnace.
Grinding can take place in other areas of your furnace, like if there’s a loose bolt or component that gets caught or trapped between two metal pieces, but these can potentially be even worse problems to encounter, so do yourself a favor and call our team for professional help if you’re hearing this sound.
2. Booming
The booming sound is actually from a miniature explosion taking place inside of your furnace right now. No, we’re not kidding–let us explain.
The gas injectors or ignition system can get covered in soot, grime, and dust over time. This is a regular part of wear and tear that should be addressed during regular maintenance. After a while, that soot and grime can clog up the gas injectors or the ignition, causing gas to pool up in the combustion chamber, until it all ignites at once. This is where the booming sound comes from, and it literally is a miniaturized explosion!
While your furnace will likely keep working like nothing ever happened, this is slowly degrading the structural integrity of your furnace system and it should be dealt with as soon as possible.
3. Buzzing
Buzzing noises can signal different things depending on where it’s coming from. There are a few electrical components to a furnace, which is usually the source of a buzzing sound. The blower fan or motor, for instance, could be encountering problems that are causing the system to make a buzz.
Or, you could simply have a frayed wire or broken electric ignition component that is just buzzing. The main thing you can count on is that a buzzing sound most often represents an electrical failure that needs to be addressed. Luckily, these problems are pretty easy for a pro to deal with.
At Dalton Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, Electric and Fireplaces, Inc., your comfort is our promise! To set up an appointment in the Cedar Falls area, give us a call at the number above, email customerservice@daltonphc.com or schedule an appointment online.