Service Protection & Maintenance Plan Benefits 

A Maintenance Plan from Valley Heating Oil is the smart play.  Preventive maintenance is an important part of keeping your system operating efficiently and safely.  We have plans designed for every budget and every household.  Our maintenance agreements aren’t contracts, we work with every customer to make sure you understand our coverage and service expectations so you can avoid unexpected repair costs.

Benefits of a Maintenance Plan and Preventive Service

1. Extend Life of HVAC System

It’s simple; maintenance plans and service plans extend the life of your HVAC system.  Imagine you bought a brand new car and drove it for 100,000 miles without any service at all (NOT RECOMMENDED)!   Yes, your car might work well at the beginning, but over time you start to notice some minor squeaks.  Without immediate service, those squeaks become squeals.  Instead of replacing your brakes you decide to wait.  By not replacing your brakes your problems escalate because the wear and tear transfers to another part of your car.  Now, your car makes a terrible, embarrassing sound when it stops because your brakes aren’t working and they’ve ruined your rotors and even calipers.  What could have been a $300 brake pad swap has ballooned into a $1,300 repair to your brakes, rotors and calipers.  Choosing to avoid preventative maintenance on your car decreases the value of your car, just like avoiding maintenance on your heating system.  Moreover, it’s less reliable and can’t keep you safe. 

Your boiler, furnace, or water heater is very similar to a car.  While it isn’t as sleek as the shiny car in your driveway, it’s the heartbeat to your house, especially in the cold winters.   Instead of having wheels and rolling down the road, it’s hooked up to ducts or pumps to move the heat energy throughout your house.  There are hundreds of parts associated with your heating system that can break.  You should have a qualified technician inspect and service your system every year to extend the useful life of your system.  

2. Increase HVAC System Efficiency

Using the car analogy again, some people will travel miles to find the cheapest gasoline in the area.  Some folks find satisfaction in saving a couple bucks on a tank fill up and we certainly understand that.   However, if your car isn’t maintained, you might be giving all that money saved right back to the gas station.  If your air filters are clogged, your tires under-inflated, have bad spark plugs or a bad fuel injector, you aren’t actually saving at money at all.   

Just like your car, your boiler, furnace, or water heater is a complex machine that needs to be tuned-up an maintained regularly to operate at peak efficiency.  It’s said that an oil heating system tune-up can increase your system efficiency but 10% or more.  If you use 1,000 gallons a year, that’s a minimum of 100 gallons of oil you could save by having an annual tune-up.  For older systems, the savings can be more.  Simple things like having the right nozzle size, the air filter changed, and the pumps and blowers working properly saves you money.

3. Save Money on Electricity Bill

Your heating system uses fuel oil but it also consumes electricity.  This is a hidden cost to many homeowners.  A furnace uses blower motors to move the heat from the heat exchanger throughout the duct work.  A modern hydronic boiler uses one or more circulator pumps to move the hot water from the boiler to the radiators throughout your house.  Older steam boilers may use gravity type systems but there’s almost always an electrical component to the functionality of your heating system, including vent systems, dampers and more.  Performing annual service on your heating system saves you electricity, hands down.  if your system isn’t transferring the heat to your ducts or radiators efficiently, then your pumps and motors are working overtime too.

4. Avoid Unexpected Repair Costs

Let’s face it, no one wants to come home from a holiday vacation or a days work to find your thermostat is set to 70, but the temperature is reading 40.  With a cold night ahead, you know the only option is to call for emergency service to try and keep your house from freezing up.  

5. Peace of Mind: Priority Service

Our customers value the idea of priority service as much as anything else.  Priority service means that we come to you instead of taking on new opportunities.  When you invest your money to protect your assets with a service oriented company, you shouldn’t have to wait for the service you’ve already paid for.  At Valley Heating Oil, you never have to wait for new customer calls or anything like that because we build our business on a trusted relationships.  If you pay us for a Service or Maintenance Plan, you’ll get priority service over anyone who calls in looking for service.   

Our technicians and mechanics are fully licensed and insured to work on nearly any system.   With years of experience, we’ve developed three base plans for your boiler or furnace and each plan is designed to benefit the customer.