Furnace Installation & Replacement in Milan, Michigan

A furnace replacement in Milan is a 20-year decision made in a basement, usually under some time pressure because the old one quit in January. Temprasure tries to take the pressure off. If you are without heat, we can set temporary heat and get equipment quickly. If you have time, we walk the house, run the load calculation, look at the chimney, the gas line and the condensate situation, and give you two or three options in writing with one flat price each. Milan, MI is well inside our radius, the owner does the install, and the Washtenaw County inspection is part of the job.

Milan houses and what that means for furnace installation

Downtown Milan and the streets around Wilson Park and Hurd Street are 1880s–1930s frame houses on stone or block basements with the original furnace location in a tight corner and a gas line that has been extended a few times. Several still have gravity-furnace duct trunks that were reused when forced air went in. The 1950s–70s ranches along Dexter Street, County Street and the Carpenter Road side of town often sit on crawlspaces or slabs, and electric baseboard or wall furnaces show up in a few that never got ductwork. Newer subdivisions off Platt Road and Arkona Road are 1990s–2000s colonials and ranches on full basements with 80 percent furnaces and R-22 condensers that are now getting replaced in bulk. On the Monroe County side and out Redman Road, we see older farmhouses with additions, mobile homes with package units, and acreage homes on well and septic.

The side-wall vent on a condensing furnace needs a good spot, and Milan lots do not always offer one. Narrow setbacks between the 1890s–1930s railroad-town homes and 1960s–2000s ranches and colonials on the older blocks near the Hack House Museum, decks built right over the likely vent location, and bedroom windows on the only clear wall all complicate things. The vent has to stay clear of snow drifts, which in a Washtenaw County winter means well above grade, and it cannot dump exhaust where it will be pulled back into the intake or into a neighbor's window. We walk the outside of the house during the free estimate and show you exactly where the intake and exhaust will terminate before you sign anything.

Heating calls from Milan 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 23 minutes away with ignitors, flame sensors, pressure switches and inducer motors on the truck. The 1890s–1930s railroad-town homes and 1960s–2000s ranches and colonials around Hurd Street neighborhood and Downtown Milan 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 the Milan Senior and Community Activity Center and out toward Carpenter Road corridor, 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 Milan

• The county line runs through town, so permits for a Milan address may go through the City of Milan, Washtenaw County or Monroe County depending on which side of the line the house sits.
• Milan's municipal water is drawn from wells and is hard, which shows up as sediment in water heaters and scale on humidifier pads.
• A good share of the 1950s–60s ranches here have original 60-amp services, so adding air conditioning starts with a panel conversation.
• Milan is low, flat and open, in the Saline River bottomland, and summer humidity lingers in the older neighborhoods close to the river. The town is far enough south that it occasionally picks up weather coming off Lake Erie that misses Ypsilanti, including heavier late-winter snow and ice. With little high ground and few windbreaks between the subdivisions and the fields to the south, winter wind drives infiltration on the exposed sides of newer homes.