ZIONSVILLE, Ind. -- With colder weather making its way into central Indiana, it’s putting a lot of heat on furnaces.
Clay Winters with Control Tech Heating Air and Plumbing in Zionsville said calls for broken furnaces ramped up around Thanksgiving.
And right now, they're getting hundreds of calls a day to fix them.
"When the temperatures dropped below 30, so when they got down in the teens and everything like that, that's when we saw the uptick in the calls," said Winters. "It's getting colder and windier and as that happens, that's when the call volume goes up."
Winters said the biggest thing homeowners can do to keep their furnaces in good shape as temperatures outside drop is to make sure their air filters are clean.
He recommends if their filter is one inch thick, change it once a month. If it's five inches thick, do that about twice a year.
Another tip he said is to keep all the vents in the house open.
"A lot of people like to close vents. Maybe it gets too hot upstairs, so they shut those vents and try to force the air down. It doesn't actually work that way," said Winters. "But what it does do is it does choke off the system and that can mimic the same effect as a dirty filter."
But Winters said there is one common mistake people make that could be putting extra strain on their furnace in the winter months -- lowering the thermostat when they leave for the day instead of keeping it at a constant temperature
"Whether you're home or not, it's easier to maintain like that. I tell people it's kind of like the equivalent of cruise control on your car. You maintain that it's better gas mileage, everything like that. It's going to keep the home safe. It's harder on your car. It's harder on your HVAC system."
But Winters said the biggest thing residents can do to prevent a problem in the coming months is stay ahead of it.
"If you have regular maintenance, we're going to catch that during that visit and hopefully prevent that breakdown during the cold months," said Winters