What’s Causing Your Furnace to Blow Cold Air?

The winter cold in the Greater Boston, MA, area to the Cape can be almost unbearable. This is why you need your furnace to be working excellently to keep your home warm. However, you might be struggling with the menace of a furnace that’s constantly blowing cold air. You don’t need to panic because we at Blue Bear Plumbing, Heating & Air have come across numerous homeowners struggling with the same problem. Before you decide what your next move should be, it’s essential you understand what might be causing the cold air problem you are experiencing with your furnace. Here is our professional take on what’s causing your furnace to blow cold air.

Your Furnace Hasn’t Warmed Up Yet

If you a turning on your furnace for the first time in a long while, you will likely feel an icy blast of cold air for a couple of minutes. This isn’t an indication that your furnace is broken; instead, it usually takes a moment before the furnace warms up to start blowing hot air into your room. Think of your furnace as a kettle with water inside. When you place the kettle over a heat source, it will take a couple of minutes for the water inside to warm up. Therefore, you shouldn’t worry when you feel a gust of cold air immediately after switching on your furnace.

At Blue Bear Plumbing, Heating & Air, we advise our clients to wait for 10 to 15 minutes for their furnace to warm up and start blowing warm air after switching it on. In case it continues blowing cold air, this might be an indication that there is another problem, which can be one of the following listed below.

Incorrect Thermostat Settings

The thermostat is the mind of your home’s heating and cooling system. If your furnace is continuously blowing cold air, you might want to check the settings on your thermostat. It might be that you forgot to set the correct temperature settings on your thermostat with the changing seasons, and this is why you are getting cold air from your furnace. Once you input the right temperatures settings on the thermostat, you will have to wait for several minutes for the furnace to warm up.

If nothing happens, replace the batteries in your thermostat with new ones and try again. We advise that you replace the batteries in your thermostat at least once annually. The best time to do the replacement is at the start of a high-usage season, such as winter. You should know that there are a variety of thermostat batteries with different lifespans ranging up to five years. Therefore, it’s vital that you check the manufacturer’s guidelines on how often you should replace the thermostat batteries you just purchased. Ensure that you have your thermostat set to ‘AUTO,’ not ‘ON.’ The ‘ON’ setting means that your furnace’s fans will keep blowing even when the furnace is not on. However, the ‘AUTO’ setting means that the fan and the furnace will turn on and off simultaneously as intended.

Clogged Furnace Air Filter

The air filter in your furnace is designed to catch dust and debris in your home’s air. For this reason, it’s supposed to be replaced regularly. However, if it has been a long while before you replaced your furnace’s air filter, or you have been generating a lot of dust and debris in your home, the air filter is likely clogged. An excessively clogged air filter will choke the airflow to the furnace and cause it to overheat and shut down. Thus, your furnace will blow cold air rather than warm air. The solution to a clogged air filter is replacing it.

Luckily, the replacement process is simple, and you can do it by yourself. Firstly, you need to make sure that the furnace is switched off before checking or removing the air filter located in the air handler. We recommend that our clients replace their furnace’s air filter every three months. If it’s been more than three months since you replaced the air filter, you should do it now. Regular air filter replacement will also protect your heat exchange from damage – the repair bill for this is very costly.

The Furnace Has Overheated

Furnaces have an internal protective mechanism that prevents them from excessively overheating. When a furnace starts to overheat, it automatically shuts itself down. This means that the furnace will be temporarily blowing cold air every time it shuts down from overheating, and this can be quite a headache during the chilly winter months. Besides a clogged air filter, dirt buildup throughout your heating system can cause the furnace to overheat. The dirt buildup is usually the result of dust and debris settling in parts of the furnace.

The dirt buildup can prevent moving components of the furnace, such as the blower, from working optimally, resulting in overheating. Mechanical failure is also a leading cause of overheating in furnaces as the more you use your furnace, the more its components experience wear and tear. This means that the older your furnace is, the more likely something will stop working as it should and result in overheating. Most furnaces have an expected lifespan of 15 years of optimal working with the best preventative maintenance. Furnaces older than this are more likely to overheat.

Leaky Air Ducts

The hot air from the furnace travels through the air ducts to get to the various rooms of your house. If you have disconnections and holes in your air ducts, it means that the hot air will be escaping before it gets to the intended destination. Thus, all you will be getting is cold air. Leaky air ducts are usually are degradation through time or rodents and other small animals clawing and biting at them. It’s crucial that you regularly inspect your air ducts for holes and disconnections.

You can fix the leaky air duct problem by sealing up the holes with tape or installing new pieces where the damage is extensive. If you have chronic leaky air duct problems, then dealing with the animals that cause the holes in your air duct is the best approach. You can also elongate the lifespan of your air ducts by cleaning the debris inside regularly – doing the cleaning annually is recommended.

Let Blue Bear Plumbing, Heating & Air Handle All Your Heating Needs

Blue Bear Plumbing, Heating & Air was founded in 2017 with a mission of providing unmatched HVAC and plumbing services to the residents and businesses of the Greater Boston, MA, area to the Cape. Since we started operations, we have grown our customer base tremendously by providing our clients with exceptional services. We tailor our services to meet each client’s unique needs and provide them with a comprehensive solution for their situation. At [company name], we pride ourselves on providing professional services undertaken by highly qualified technicians. We are EPA certified, BBB A+ rated, OSHA certified, and have numerous positive customer testimonials attesting to the quality of our services. We handle air conditioning, heating, plumbing, indoor air quality, duct repair and installation, boilers, construction, and preventative maintenance.

Additionally, we provide round-the-clock emergency services and financing on approved credit. We have a special Blue Care Priority Plan that gives our clients access to priority services, regularly scheduled tune-ups, and discounted repairs. The Blue Care Priority Plan is transferable should you sell your home. Contact Blue Bear Plumbing, Heating & Air name to get additional information on our services, financing, and other specials.