Why Does My Heating Shut Off When My Home Is Still Cold?
Comfort Zone • December 9, 2013

December 9, 2013

Although we don’t need to rely on our heating systems for many months during the year in Georgia, they are still important for those stretches of cool days and chilly nights that come along during the winter. You want to make sure that your heater is doing the best job it can during those times when you need it.

If your heater starts shutting down soon after it comes on, leaving many rooms in your house still unpleasantly cold, you have a problem that is known as short cycling . It’s a failure that can happen to all types of heating systems, and there are different reasons for it to occur. In this post, we’ll look at the most common ones and tell you what you can do about them. For more information, contact the Atlanta, GA heating repair specialists at Comfort Zone Heating & Air. We provide service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Reasons for short cycling

  • Problems with the thermostat: If a thermostat malfunctions, it can incorrectly gauge the temperature in your home, or develop a faulty connection to the heater. A miscalibrated thermostat might sense that your home is sufficiently warm when it actually isn’t, and then signal the heater to shut down before it has completed its heating cycle. Thankfully, this is an easy problem for a technician to repair, since it only requires fixes to the thermostat or replacing the unit.
  • Loss of refrigerant: This applies to heat pumps. If your heat pump loses refrigerant through a leak, its heating power will start to decline, causing it to shut off prematurely.
  • Improperly sized heater: This is the most serious of the issues because it is difficult to fix. An oversized heater will raise the temperature so rapidly that it will shut off before it can complete its cycle and evenly spread heat through your home. If the heater is too large for your home, you  should talk to a contractor about your options.

Other problems caused by short cycling

Aside from keeping your house from getting warm enough, a short-cycling heater will also cost you extra on your heating bills. A heater uses the largest amount of power when it starts up, so numerous unnecessary start-ups will quickly drain power. This also puts more stress on the heater’s components, causing them to wear out faster and leading to early repairs.

If you detect short cycling happening in your home’s heater, call in professionals right away to find out the cause. Comfort Zone Heating & Air has the experience to locate the problem and offer the best way to fix it. Call us for all your needs for heating repair in Atlanta, GA.

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