Last winter, I noticed that my furnace didn’t seem to be heating as efficiently as it should be.
Since it was so cold, we kept turning the thermostat up to try to heat up our whole home, however even though it was turned up as high as it could go, our new home was still freezing even though our furnace was running, and it was making lots of noise, and so I called our local Heating and Air Conditioning company and described the problem, and they sent out a specialist the next day.
He checked our furnace and said that it seemed to be working properly, however after inspecting our air ducts he realized what the problem was. In our forced-air gas furnace, multiple of the connections between ducts were beginning to wear down, meaning that the hot air from our furnace was escaping through the ducts and seeping into our attic and between the walls of our house, resulting in an over-working furnace, and yet still a freezing house. This situation was severely inefficient, and all of the work that our furnace was doing was not being put to great use. I had never seen a higher heating bill, however thankfully, after the service that the Heating and Air Conditioning specialist performed on our system, our bill returned to a normal amount the following month. He even made multiple suggestions to update our home with energy efficient windows, and new seals around doors and windows, and after making these small changes, I was able to save hundreds on my heating bill each month! Who knew that my money was literally flying out of the cracks in our home!