Heat pump and furnace maintenance at home
One visit for the system you already own: the readings taken, the coils and filters done, and what we found written down.
Service is mostly measurement
A maintenance visit is a set of numbers taken off the equipment, compared against what the equipment is supposed to do.
Heat pumps and furnaces rarely fail without warning. They drift. Charge goes slightly low, a coil loads up, a blower draws a little more current every year, a flame sensor gets dirty. None of that is visible from the hallway, and all of it shows up in readings.
That is the whole argument for annual service: catching drift while it is still a cleaning job. The alternative is finding out on the coldest night of the year, when the part has to come from off-Island.
It matters more on equipment you intend to keep. The provincial Home Renovation Rebate will not pay to replace a heat pump that already exists, so the one on your wall is one you are looking after (program requirements).
A tune-up is a set of readings. If nobody wrote numbers down, nothing was measured.
Which is why you get the readings, and why next year's technician has something to compare them against.
What a service visit covers
Two different machines, two different visits. Most houses on this coast have one of each.
On a heat pump
- Outdoor coil washed down, and the cabinet cleared
- Refrigerant charge measured
- Defrost cycle watched through, start to finish
- Indoor coil, filters and the condensate drain
- Electrical connections, contactor and running current
- Temperature split across the indoor coil, written down
- Thermostat staging and the backup heat lockout
On a furnace
- Burners and flame sensor cleaned, ignition watched through
- Heat exchanger inspected, flue and venting checked
- Blower wheel, motor and running current
- Filter and return airflow
- Temperature rise measured against the data plate
- Safety switches and limits proved
- Readings written down so next year has a comparison
What exactly your system needs depends on the make, the age and what turns up on the day. Tell us what you have and we will tell you what the visit involves before you book it.
How often, and when
A heat pump gets looked at once a year, because it works in both seasons and never gets one off. A furnace gets looked at before the heating season, which on this coast means early autumn rather than the week it stops working.
If the house has both, the sensible pattern is one visit in the autumn that covers the furnace and the heat pump together. That is one trip, one invoice, and the whole system in the same set of notes.
On manufacturer warranties: some makes ask for documented annual service to keep the warranty in force and some do not. It is brand by brand rather than a rule, so tell us the make and we will tell you what yours says.
Put the next visit on the calendar
The easiest way to stop maintenance slipping a year is to book the next one while the technician is still standing in your utility room. Ask, and we will put it in before we leave.
Businesses work differently. Commercial equipment runs on a scheduled round with written readings, because a cooler failing is stock on the floor rather than a cold evening.
Was somebody else looking after it?
If your heating and cooling was being maintained by another company, we will pick it up. We do not need their paperwork and we are not going to ask you about them. We need the equipment.
Send the make, model and serial numbers through the contact form, with what your last service invoice says if you kept one. That invoice tells us what was done, what was flagged and what was left, which is a better starting point than a fresh guess.
Equipment somebody else installed is the same story. We start from what is on the wall.
Where we run maintenance
Annual service across Oceanside, Nanaimo, the Alberni Valley and the West Coast.
Parksville
Ten minutes down the highway, on the same round as Qualicum Beach.
DetailsQualicum Beach
The shop is in town, so a return visit is a short drive rather than a scheduling problem.
DetailsNanaimo
Down Highway 19 from the shop. Heat pumps and furnace work for homes.
DetailsPort Alberni
A Valley house works its heating in January and its cooling in July, so an annual service out there covers both ends rather than just the furnace.
DetailsTofino
Wet, salty air is hard on anything mounted outside, so the outdoor unit is where a service visit earns its money out there: coil washed down, cabinet and fasteners checked, drainage cleared before the weather finds it.
DetailsUcluelet
Heating runs most of the year here and cooling barely runs at all, so maintenance is the heating side, the filters and the airflow rather than a summer tune-up.
DetailsAlso covered Nanoose Bay French Creek Coombs Errington Bowser Qualicum Bay Deep Bay Lantzville Ladysmith Chemainus Duncan Courtenay Comox Cumberland Campbell River and across Central Vancouver Island, from Campbell River to Duncan
Maintenance questions we get
How often should a heat pump be serviced?
What does a furnace tune-up include?
Do you service heat pumps another company installed?
Does my warranty need annual service?
Book this year's service visit
Tell us what is in the house and roughly when it was last looked at. That is enough to book the right length of visit. We reply within 24 hours.