Furnace Installation & Replacement in Westland, Michigan

Before we quote a new furnace for a Westland home, we look at the old one. That sounds obvious, but a lot of Westland, 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 1950s–60s brick ranches and bungalows house near Tonquish Creek 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 25 minutes away.

Westland houses and what that means for furnace installation

Westland is probably the most consistent housing stock in our Wayne County service area, and we know it well. The typical house is a three-bedroom brick ranch from 1955 to 1968, 1,000 to 1,300 square feet, on either a full block basement or a crawlspace, with a single-return furnace in the basement and a trunk line running down the center of the house. Bungalows with finished attic bedrooms are common on the older blocks near Merriman and Palmer, and those upstairs rooms are notoriously hard to heat and cool off a single system. Norwayne's wartime houses are even smaller, on slabs or crawlspaces, with ductwork that was minimal to begin with. Most Westland furnaces have been replaced at least twice, and central air was added in the 80s or 90s on a lot of these houses, usually with a condenser squeezed between the house and the fence. Electrical panels of 100 amps are the norm, and many are full.

Chimneys decide a lot of furnace replacements in Westland. The 1950s–60s brick ranches and bungalows around Tonquish Creek were built with a masonry chimney that served both the furnace and the water heater, and when a homeowner switches to a 96 percent condensing furnace that vents out the side wall in PVC, the water heater is left alone in a flue far too large for it. The exhaust cools, condenses on the brick, and in bad cases backdrafts into the basement. On every Westland, MI estimate where a high-efficiency furnace is on the table, we look at the chimney and price a properly sized liner or a power-vent solution for the water heater as part of the job, so the upgrade does not create a new problem.

Westland winters are long enough that a furnace runs more hours in a year here than an air conditioner runs in five. We maintain and repair the gas furnaces in the 1950s–60s brick ranches and bungalows near the Westland Farmers Market and Westland Shopping Center, the hot-water boilers in the older houses around Norwayne, and the furnaces in newer subdivisions out toward Joy Road neighborhoods where builder-grade equipment hits its first real failures around year ten. The shop is 16 miles away, the truck carries the parts that fail, and a heating call in Westland ends with heat on the first visit far more often than not.

Local details we plan around in Westland

• Westland requires mechanical permits and inspections through its building department for furnace, AC and water heater replacements, and inspectors check venting and gas piping closely.
• The bungalows with finished attics almost always need a separate return or a duct modification to get the upstairs within a few degrees of the main floor.
• Norwayne's 1942 defense houses sit on slabs with ductwork in the slab or attic, which limits options and makes duct repair a real consideration.
• Westland is flat and almost completely built out, so it holds summer heat more than the townships to its west, with brick ranches on treeless blocks running warm into the evening. The Middle Rouge valley through Hines Park and the Tonquish Creek drain add humidity and basement moisture to the neighborhoods along Ann Arbor Trail and Palmer Road. Winter is standard Southeast Michigan freeze-thaw with little wind shelter from the lot lines.