Improving your existing heating system may be less expensive and advantageous then buying an entire new heating system. Doing regular maintenance and adding small upgrades can make your older heating system more efficient and more cost effective to operate. Preventative and regular maintenance is the most important thing that you can do to make sure your heating equipment operate efficiently.

Some of the routine maintenance items that should be performed are to clean and tune your oil or gas burners. If you have oil fired heating the unit should be serviced once per calendar year. If you have a gas fired heating unit it should be serviced at least once every two years. If soot accumulates the heat exchangers efficiency can be significantly diminished. This is particularity true with an oil furnace.

Another simple but very important step in maintaining hot air furnace is to change the filter on a regular basis. For most furnaces this means replacing the filter once per month. Some hot air units have high efficiency and electronic air cleaners. Check with the manufacturer for the care and maintenance of these specialized air filters to help keep them filtering air a peek efficiency.

If the ducts in the home are not tightly sealed energy will be lost. Duct leaks contribute to a very large part of the overall energy loss associated with forced air heating system. Investing a few hundred dollars in duct repairs and maintenance can return big dividends in energy cost savings. Also keep the furnace blower motor and fan blades clean.

Look for soot, corrosion and rust around the area of the furnace, rust and soot may be a sign of a major malfunction and immediate service should be performed by a professional HVAC technician.

Insulate ducts that are located in unheated spaces. By the time the heated air flows to the interior rooms much of the heat is lost. Installing insulation around the exposed ducts in the unheated space will keep heat loss to a minimum and help you save significantly on energy costs.