Heating season is almost here, especially up here in New York. At JSP Plumbing & Heating, Inc., we are taking the initiative to get our clients ready for the winter chill. We have recently begun calling our VIP service agreement customers and scheduling their annual maintenances to help prevent their heaters from breaking down when the temperature drops outside. One of the most common questions our Kingston HVAC technicians here is “How often should I maintain my system?” To answer that question, let’s have some fun and make an entertaining analogy. Have you ever seen Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy? It is patently hilarious for all of its wackiness but it serves a pretty useful point for this discussion. The archeologist in the movie goes deep into a tomb and finds a priceless artifact. When he takes the treasure out into the daylight, it turns to dust in a comedic and unexpected poof. That’s what it’s like when we come across a system that’s past its prime and hasn’t been maintained properly. In the most extreme cases, we close the “tomb” and leave the “artifact” undisturbed for fear that it will “turn to dust.” In the best case scenario, costly repairs along with the inconvenience of no heat for a period of time will be necessary to get it up and running again. On the other hand, we may need to install a new system on the fly without notice or planning. Considering again the question of “How often should I maintain my system?” The answer is unequivocally at least once a year. Depending on your system, there could be 100+ points of contact that need to be checked for faults or failures. Having a service expert at least once every 12 months can save you time, money, and the headaches that come with system failure.

Murphy’s Law & Your Heating System

Every engineer, technician, programmer, and anyone else in similar lines of work is well aware of Murphy’s law, which states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Heating systems don’t fail when its mild out, they fail when it’s the coldest day of the year. If your heating system can fail when it’s a really bad cold snap in the worst weather of the season, it will. If you don’t have a service agreement, it could be days before you get a trained expert out to look at the issue. Worse still, you might wind up with unprofessional HVAC technicians who behave just like those clowns, Abbot and Costello! On top of those issues, if your system is old, it could be days until the parts arrive to repair the problems.

The bottom line is that preventative and routine maintenance is necessary if you want to avoid a dusty artifact of an HVAC system, and a service agreement is needed if you want to avoid goofball technicians like Abbot and Costello. Don’t let your heating system become an artifact and don’t let untrained people work on it. Every system should have the potential to run at its most efficient and give you the greatest value.

If you do run into a jam, remember that JSP and our highly-trained heating system specialists are ready 24/7/365 for emergencies and scheduled work. We offer service agreements through our JSP VIP Club that help you stay on top of your system maintenance with ease. If you’re not already signed up, give us a call at (845) 209-1700 to learn how to join. You can also contact us online to schedule an appointment.