Preparing Your Home for the Big Freeze!

CHARLOTTE, NC – For heating repairman Danny Cabe – it’s been a busy on-call Saturday.
His last service of the day – comes at this apartment in Uptown Charlotte.
“Christmas was pretty warm and then all of a sudden it just dropped temperature, so the calls just come in pretty quick and it keeps you pretty busy,” Cabe says.
He says those warm temps early on may mislead customers into believing their unit’s alright.
The owner says the heat pump didn’t give any signs of a problem – until it died sometime overnight.
“Just all of a sudden something breaks,” Cabe says.
Experts say routine maintenance is your best bet to avoid any issues.
“You can’t always stop all failures even with preventative maintenance, but it certainly is a big help to do so,” says Tom Patterson, with Carolina Heating and Air Design.
Patterson says he’s also anticipating calls to repair gas furnaces.
Tuesday’s low in Charlotte is expected to be 8 degrees – with possible wind chills below zero.
“We hate for everybody to have no-heat situations even though it’s good for our business – but we do expect to see more and more calls come in,” Patterson says.
He adds if you have a gas furnace – it’s also a good time to check carbon monoxide detectors.
Furnaces that haven’t been serviced in a while can be prone to leaks.
Back in Uptown – Cabe found out this heat pump is over ten years old needed a new capacitor.
He says it’s fortunate it went out now – and not when temps really drop later this week.