Few situations are as alarming as being stuck without a working furnace during the long, cold months of winter. Not only would you be deprived of centralized heating, but you will also have no hot water for showers. Therefore, it is in your best interests to know exactly what to do if your furnace stops working. Whether you are already in a situation like this or just want to be better prepared, here is a brief checklist of how to troubleshoot your furnace:

What is the problem?

it may seem obvious, but you really want to narrow down the exact nature of your problem. For instance, you might have working centralized heating, but no hot water or vice versa. There might also be a problem with the distribution of heat, but not with the furnace itself.

Before progressing any further, you're going to want to check whether or not the presence of hot water is connected to the usage of your central heating. In some cases, hot water does work, but only when your heater is turned on and running. In other cases, there is simply no hot water at all. 

Hot water works, heating doesn't

In this case, you will first want to take a hard look at the ventilation in your house. Blockages in vents can make it seem like your furnace is broken, even if it's working perfectly fine. An easy way to check this is to carefully check the temperature in every room of your house. If it varies drastically from room to room, then you might have a localized blockage.

However, the problem can also be quite a bit more complicated, such as a broken diverter valve. This can also cause the reverse problem, where you do have central heating, but no hot water.

Hot water doesn't work, heating does

There are a couple of possible explanations for this problem. First, there might be something wrong with the control panel for your furnace. If you recently lost power, or if anything could have affected the control panel, then you should definitely check there first to see if any settings are obviously incorrect, such as the thermostat being set abnormally low.

Sometimes simply turning the furnace off and on again can solve your problems. On the other hand, there might be a problem inside your furnace. In this case, you might need to hire an expert unless you are particularly handy.

To get professional help with your furnace, call a company such as Butler Heating & Air.