Fall’s Around the Corner — A Seasonal Maintenance Checklist for Your Orlando Home

As fall approaches, it brings with it the promise of falling leaves and cooler weather. But something to consider before the cool season arrives is the need for a fall maintenance checklist for your Orlando area home. Here is a quick list of tasks that you should be ready for:

• Search for air leakage – Air leaks can greatly affect your home’s efficiency, costing you money in lost energy. Now’s a great time to seal any cracks or gaps that you might find. To make sure you don’t miss anything, consider a home evaluation by a licensed HVAC technician.
• Check your insulation – Proper insulation is necessary to help prevent thermal energy transfer between inside and outside of your home, which makes your HVAC unit work harder. If you don’t have sufficient, or the right type of, insulation, add some before the seasons change. An HVAC professional can determine insufficiencies during an inspection.
• Get your heating system checked – Before the weather gets too cool, have a professional inspect your heating system for any possible problems. A preseason tuneup is always a good idea, and is actually required to maintain warranties in some cases.
• Inspect your fireplace – In addition to your heating system, it’s important that your fireplace is checked as well. If your chimney has become clogged due to birds or rodents building nests, falling leaves and sticks, or other such debris, it needs to be cleared out for both safety and efficiency.
• Test your smoke and CO detectors – Your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are essential to ensuring your family’s safety. Test them per the units’ instructions and switch out their batteries if necessary.
• Clean your humidifiers – This should be done before the fall season and throughout, as bacteria and mold can accumulate inside the water tank and be sent out into your home’s clean air, triggering or exacerbating possible respiratory and other health issues.
• Clear out our rain gutters — If your gutters get clogged with falling leaves, rainfall will spill over the gutters and get into the foundation. Eventually, that water will get into your house.

If you would like further assistance with creating a fall maintenance checklist, or for any other questions regarding home comfort, please contact our experts at Rinaldi’s Energy Solutions. We’ve been serving the heating and cooling needs of Orlando and the surrounding area since 1969.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Orlando, Florida and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about seasonal maintenance checklists and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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