Emergency Heating Repair in Whittaker, Michigan

When the furnace quits in Whittaker on a night the forecast says minus 8, you need someone who picks up. Temprasure is open 24 hours, Al answers the phone himself, and Whittaker, MI is about 16 minutes from our shop in Ypsilanti. The truck carries the ignitors, flame sensors, pressure switches, capacitors and boards that take furnaces down in the dark, and we charge the same flat rate at 2 a.m. as at 2 p.m. If someone in your home near subdivisions between Bemis and Willis Roads is elderly, an infant or medically fragile, say so and you move to the front of the line.

Whittaker houses and what that means for emergency heating

Around the crossroads itself the houses are 1880s–1930s farm-village homes with Michigan basements, balloon framing and a forced-air system that was retrofitted into a house built for a wood or coal stove. Those homes tend to have a single undersized return and a furnace that has been replaced two or three times without the ductwork ever being touched. Along Whittaker, Willis and Talladay Roads the common house is a 1970s–90s ranch or raised ranch on a crawlspace or block basement, with the original furnace in a utility room and a condenser that was added in the 1990s on whatever circuit was available. The 2000s subdivisions between Bemis and Willis Roads are colonials and ranches on poured basements with builder-grade equipment that is reaching replacement age, and a lot of them run propane rather than gas. Manufactured homes and modulars on the side roads often have small downflow furnaces and package units that need parts most shops do not stock.

Power outages are the other emergency generator in Whittaker. An ice storm takes down lines, DTE Energy restores power with a surge, and the furnace control board in a 1970s–90s rural ranches and 2000s acreage homes around an old crossroads basement near subdivisions between Bemis and Willis Roads does not survive it. Or the power blinks three times in an hour and the furnace locks out with a code nobody can read. We get a wave of these calls after every winter outage in Washtenaw County. We read the code, test the board and transformer, replace what actually failed, and for homes that lose power often we talk about a surge protector at the furnace, which costs a fraction of a second board.

Heating calls from Whittaker come in two waves: the first real cold night in November and whatever stretch of January the polar vortex decides to visit. Both times we are 16 minutes away with ignitors, flame sensors, pressure switches and inducer motors on the truck. The 1970s–90s rural ranches and 2000s acreage homes around an old crossroads around the Whittaker crossroads at Whittaker and Willis Roads and Merritt Road area mostly burn DTE Energy natural gas, and the furnaces in them are old enough that a heat exchanger inspection is part of every visit, not an upsell. Near Augusta Township Hall and out toward Willis Road west toward Mooreville, we also see high-efficiency furnaces whose exterior vents ice over in a storm, which looks like a dead furnace and is a ten-minute fix.

Local details we plan around in Whittaker

• Every home in Whittaker is on a private well, and the water is hard with enough iron to shorten water heater life and clog humidifier pads within a season.
• Crawlspace ductwork on the 1970s ranches here is frequently rusted, disconnected or chewed, and we check it on every furnace call before we blame the equipment.
• Septic drain fields are universal, so we keep high-efficiency furnace condensate out of the septic line with a neutralizer or a separate discharge.
• Whittaker is on flat, open ground with Stony Creek running through the low land to the north and east, and the creek bottom holds moisture that keeps nearby crawlspaces damp through late spring. There is almost no windbreak between the crossroads and the fields to the west, so winter wind hits the exposed side of every house. Summer is humid and still, and homes without mature shade trees run their air conditioning longer than their size would suggest.