Heating, cooling and water heater service in Northville, MI

About Northville

Northville is a Victorian mill town that became one of the wealthiest small cities in the Detroit area without losing its downtown. The city straddles the Wayne and Oakland County line at Eight Mile Road, with the historic core, Mill Race Village and the old Northville Downs harness track on the Wayne side and the north half of downtown in Oakland. We reach it from the shop by M-14 east to Beck Road or Sheldon, then north through Plymouth Township, which runs just under half an hour. Main and Center Streets are lined with restored 1870s to 1900s houses, and the Marquis Theatre and Town Square anchor a downtown that closes to traffic for outdoor dining in summer. The surrounding township, which shares the name and the school district, is a sea of subdivisions built from the 1970s through the 2010s, with Maybury State Park and the Highland Lakes area on the west side. The Northville Downs track closed and is being redeveloped into housing. Residents are largely professionals, executives and retirees, and the housing is expensive and well kept.

What Northville houses need from an HVAC company

Northville's housing splits sharply between the historic city and the township subdivisions. The Cady Street district and the blocks off Main and Center are 1870s to 1920s two-stories and Queen Annes with Michigan basements, fieldstone walls and low ceilings, where the ductwork was retrofitted and the furnace location is usually a compromise. Some of these houses still have steam or hot-water radiators fed by boilers that have been rebuilt more than once. The Beal Town and Randolph Street blocks have 1920s to 40s bungalows with small basements and finished attics. Beyond the city, the township's 1970s colonials and quad-levels in Northville Hills and Highland Lakes are on block basements with original trunk-and-branch duct, and the 1990s to 2010s subdivisions off Seven Mile, Six Mile and Beck Road are large colonials on poured basements with two systems, zoning and, often, a furnace in the attic serving the second floor. Water heaters in the newer houses are 50-gallon or power-vented gas units, and 75-gallon tanks are not unusual.

Weather and the equipment it tests

Northville is hilly for Southeast Michigan, sitting on the moraine ridge that runs through Maybury State Park, and the elevation plus heavy tree cover keeps the historic district a few degrees cooler on summer afternoons than the flat suburbs to the south. The Middle Rouge and Johnson Creek run through the downtown valley, and basements along them carry moisture. The open high ground along Seven and Eight Mile takes winter wind with little obstruction.

Local details we plan around

• Northville's historic district commission reviews exterior changes on designated downtown properties, which can constrain where a condenser or a PVC vent termination goes.
• Fieldstone Michigan basements on Cady Street and the surrounding blocks are low and damp, so equipment goes on raised pads and condensate routing takes planning.
• The city sits in two counties and permits run through the city building department regardless, but township addresses just outside the limits go through Northville Township.
• Attic furnaces in the newer two-system colonials are prone to frozen condensate lines and ignored filters, and we inspect them on every maintenance visit.
• Boilers and radiators are still in service in a meaningful number of downtown houses, and we work on those systems as well as forced air.
• Northville water is a mix of Detroit-system supply and, in parts of the township, well water that runs hard enough to affect water heaters.