Furnace Installation & Replacement in Van Buren Township, Michigan

Before we quote a new furnace for a Van Buren Township home, we look at the old one. That sounds obvious, but a lot of Van Buren Township, MI homeowners have been handed replacement quotes by companies that never put a camera in the heat exchanger. Temprasure inspects first, and if the furnace in your 1960s–70s ranches along the lake and 1990s–2010s subdivision colonials house near Country Walk has years left, we say so. When it does not, we size the new one with a Manual J, walk you through 80 versus 96 percent for your specific venting and water heater situation, and install it ourselves with the Wayne County permit included. Estimates are free and we are about 14 minutes away.

Van Buren Township houses and what that means for furnace installation

We see three different kinds of houses in Van Buren. Along Belleville Lake's north shore and down Huron River Drive are 1960s and 70s ranches and tri-levels that started as lake places and grew sunrooms, decks and second stories, usually without the furnace or ductwork ever being resized. The newer subdivisions off Haggerty, Belleville Road and Savage Road are 1995 to 2010 colonials and ranches on poured basements with original 80 percent furnaces and condensers that are now 15 to 25 years old and failing in clusters. The north side near Ecorse Road and Rawsonville has older post-war ranches on crawlspaces and slabs with tight furnace closets and short duct runs. Water heaters across the township are overwhelmingly 40 and 50 gallon atmospheric gas tanks. Finished basements in the subdivisions put the furnace in a utility room with a louvered door that rarely supplies enough combustion air, and we find a lot of 90-plus furnaces installed with the intake and exhaust terminating too close together.

The side-wall vent on a condensing furnace needs a good spot, and Van Buren Township lots do not always offer one. Narrow setbacks between the 1960s–70s ranches along the lake and 1990s–2010s subdivision colonials on the older blocks near Quirk Park, 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 Wayne 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.

In Van Buren Township the furnace is the one appliance nobody thinks about until it fails at 11 p.m. with the temperature falling through the teens. That is when the phone rings, and that is when being 7 miles away matters. We know the 1960s–70s ranches along the lake and 1990s–2010s subdivision colonials along Denton and the basements near Belleville Lake's north shore, we carry parts for every brand that went into Wayne County homes, and we charge the same flat rate at midnight that we charge at noon. Van Buren Township has about 30,000, spread across 36 square miles on both sides of I-94 people and a lot of twenty-year-old furnaces; we would rather tell you yours has five winters left than sell you a new one it does not need.

Local details we plan around in Van Buren Township

• Homes along Huron River Drive and the lake's north shore sit on a high water table, and we routinely find furnaces and water heaters rusting from below after a wet spring.
• Many of the 1990s subdivision homes were built with flex-duct branches run across the basement ceiling that have been crushed by drywall or storage, which shows as weak airflow to the second floor.
• Township water comes from the Detroit system, so sediment buildup in water heaters is lighter than in the well-served parts of Sumpter and Augusta Townships.
• The township straddles the Huron River valley, so the lake shore and the land along Lower Huron Metropark carry high humidity and damp basements, while the open fields north of I-94 toward Willow Run take the full force of west winds. Belleville Lake keeps the air a touch cooler on summer afternoons but foggier on spring and fall mornings. Freeze-thaw cycling is constant through January and February, and snowfall is moderate without any lake-effect contribution.