Heating, cooling and water heater service in Ann Arbor Township, MI

About Ann Arbor Township

Ann Arbor Township is the ring of unincorporated land that wraps around the north and east sides of the city, and reaching it from our shop means heading up Huron Parkway or US-23 to Geddes, Plymouth or Dixboro Road, about eighteen minutes on a normal day. It is one of the smallest townships by population in the county but one of the wealthiest by property, because it chose decades ago to stay low-density and to buy development rights on its farms and woodlots. Barton Hills, a gated village on the bluffs above Barton Pond, is its own municipality but sits entirely inside the township. Geddes Road east of the city is lined with estates on the Huron River. Domino's Farms, the Prairie-style office campus, and Matthaei Botanical Gardens are the landmarks most people know, and Concordia University occupies the old Earhart estate on Geddes. Residents are largely university faculty, physicians, executives and retirees who wanted acreage, trees and a river view within a few minutes of downtown Ann Arbor.

What Ann Arbor Township houses need from an HVAC company

Almost nothing in Ann Arbor Township is a tract house, which means every service call is a little different. Barton Hills is 1920s–60s architect-designed homes, some with original boilers and radiators, others with forced air that was threaded through later, and many with both plus a separate attic air handler for the upper floors. The Geddes Road and Huron River Drive estates are 1950s–80s customs and 1990s–2010s rebuilds on walkout basements facing the river, frequently with three or four separate systems serving different wings. Along Earhart, Warren and Joy Roads, the township has 1960s–80s ranches and contemporaries on wooded lots, often with a furnace in a crawlspace or garage utility room and ductwork running through unconditioned space. Older farmhouses on Pontiac Trail and Whitmore Lake Road have Michigan basements and a chain of additions. Oversized equipment is common here because builders of large custom homes rarely bothered with a proper load calculation.

Weather and the equipment it tests

The Huron River and Barton Pond dominate the township's weather at ground level: homes on the bluffs and along Huron River Drive deal with fog, heavy dew and basement humidity that the city's higher ground does not. Thick oak and hickory cover across Barton Hills and the Geddes estates keeps summer cooling loads modest but drops leaves and branches on condensers every fall. North of M-14, the land opens into fields and takes the full winter wind.

Local details we plan around

• DTE gas runs along the main corridors, but a surprising number of estates on Huron River Drive, Geddes and the northern roads heat with propane, and some have large buried tanks.
• Nearly all of the township is on private wells, and the water around the river bluffs runs hard with enough iron and sulfur to shorten water heater life.
• Barton Hills has its own village government and architectural review, so exterior equipment placement there can involve an extra approval.
• Mechanical permits for township addresses are handled by Washtenaw County, not the City of Ann Arbor, despite the shared mailing address.
• Homes with multiple furnaces and air handlers in different wings mean a single thermostat complaint often turns out to be a zoning or balancing problem rather than an equipment failure.
• Long, tree-lined private drives make power outages frequent, and we field a steady stream of questions about generator transfer wiring for furnaces.