Are you struggling with a love-hate relationship with your furnace? Does your furnace just seem to minimally heat your home and send you sass in the form of a wonderfully high heating bill every month?

It’s time to sit down and discuss how your heater is feeling and what you can do to make living together more than a bunch of buzzing sounds and cold shoulders.

Just like people, furnaces have things that upset them ­— things that will have you kicking yourself if you neglect them or have no clue they need these things done.

“Commonly, I see students having these (furnace) issues because their landlords have usually never replaced the filters or used any filters at all, and that negligence is what really damages your heating unit and makes it buzz, rattle and inefficiently heat your apartment,” said Brad Wentz, a heating technician for Buckeye Heating and Cooling.

You should never see rusting, water spots or discoloration on or around your furnace, nor should you ever smell gas or a burning smell or hear obnoxious buzzing and rattling. Your furnace will make some noise but it should not disrupt your everyday living, experts at Buckeye Heating and Cooling say.

“Students should use their senses — if they see, hear or smell anything abnormal, they should not call weeks later and say that, ‘Well, this started about a week or two ago,’ because by that time, the furnace has probably incurred a lot of damage. A large maintenance repair, nine out of 10 times, happens because the tenant waits to see if the problem will either go away or get worse. Don’t do that,” Wentz said.

He also recommends that no one except a technician try to fix a furnace, and to call landlords with a problem immediately.

If your furnace is happy, but your heating bills are a constant problem, put on a sweatshirt and turn down the heat.

Degrees of heat are dollar amounts, and if you can keep your heat below 70, usually somewhere in the 60s, your bill will be much more manageable, experts say.

Stop dreading turning on your heat. Just give your furnace a little TLC and you will be amazed at how much you and your furnace will get along this winter.