Heating, cooling and water heater service in Lodi Township, MI

About Lodi Township

Lodi Township is the open country between Ann Arbor and Saline, west of Pittsfield, and we usually come in from the shop by way of Textile Road or Ann Arbor-Saline Road in a bit over twenty minutes. There is no village, just the crossroads at Pleasant Lake and Ann Arbor-Saline Roads that old maps call Lodi Center, with the township hall and a cemetery. The Washtenaw Farm Council Grounds, where the county fair is held, sit on Ann Arbor-Saline Road and give a sense of what the whole township looked like a generation ago: flat, productive farmland with a farmhouse every quarter mile. Travis Pointe Country Club changed that on the north side in the 1980s, drawing large custom homes onto golf-course lots, and the Pittsfield border along Textile Road has pulled in subdivisions since the late 1990s. Still, most of Lodi is two-to-ten-acre parcels with a ranch or colonial set back from a gravel shoulder. Residents are farming families, Ann Arbor professionals who wanted a Saline school address and some land, and horse people who need a barn.

What Lodi Township houses need from an HVAC company

Lodi homes almost all have one thing in common: they are on their own well and septic, and a good number of them are on propane. The Travis Pointe area is 1980s–2000s large customs with multiple furnaces, finished walkouts and long duct runs that were rarely balanced. Scattered along Pleasant Lake, Parker and Wagner Roads are 1970s–90s ranches and split-levels on crawlspaces or partial basements, often with a 1990s furnace that is on its last heat exchanger and a condenser that still runs R-22. The 1800s–1920s farmhouses that survive have Michigan basements with dirt or rough concrete floors, additions off the back and a furnace that is doing the work of two. Along the Textile Road border, 1998–2010 subdivision colonials on poured basements carry builder-grade 80 percent furnaces and single-stage air conditioners now hitting twenty years. Barns, workshops and pole buildings with their own heaters are a regular part of the conversation out here.

Weather and the equipment it tests

Lodi is flat, open and largely treeless outside the yards themselves, and it takes winter wind straight off the fields from the west and southwest, which makes infiltration a bigger factor in heating loads than it is in the shaded neighborhoods of Ann Arbor. Summer sun on a west-facing wall with no canopy pushes condensers hard. The Saline River headwaters and the low ground near Saline-Waterworks Road hold some humidity, but most of the township drains well.

Local details we plan around

• DTE gas reaches the Travis Pointe area and the subdivisions near Textile Road, but many roads in the middle and west of the township have no gas main, so propane furnaces and water heaters are routine.
• Well water here is hard and often high in iron, and tank water heaters without regular flushing pack with sediment within a few years.
• Mechanical permits for Lodi addresses go through Washtenaw County's building department, and the county expects permits on furnace and condenser replacements even on rural parcels.
• Septic drain fields are everywhere, and condensate from high-efficiency furnaces needs a neutralizer or a safe discharge point rather than a floor drain that feeds the septic.
• Pole barns and workshops with unit heaters or hanging furnaces are common, and homeowners here often ask us to look at those along with the house.
• Power outages are frequent on the long rural lines, so we see a lot of furnaces wired for generator backup and a lot that should be.