Furnace Installation & Replacement in Willis, Michigan

Temprasure installs gas furnaces throughout Willis, and the question we get most often is whether a high-efficiency 96 percent unit is worth it over an 80. The honest answer depends on the house. In the 1950s–80s rural ranches and farmhouses with scattered 2000s builds common around the Augusta-Sumpter township line, a condensing furnace saves real money on DTE Energy gas across a 6,000-degree-day winter, but it also needs a side-wall PVC vent and may leave the water heater alone on an oversized chimney. We sort all of that out on a free estimate at your Willis home before you decide, and we tell you plainly which option we would put in our own house.

Willis houses and what that means for furnace installation

The typical Willis house is a 1950s–80s ranch on a crawlspace or a shallow block basement, built by a farm family or an auto worker on a piece of split-off land, and heated by a furnace that has been replaced once or twice without anyone enlarging the ductwork. Many of these were originally on fuel oil, and we still find abandoned oil tanks in basements and oil-to-gas conversion furnaces that are long past their design life. The farmhouses along Bunton and Tuttle Hill Roads are 1870s–1920s two-stories with Michigan basements and a forced-air system threaded in after the fact, usually with cold upstairs bedrooms as the result. Scattered 1990s–2010s acreage homes are colonials and ranches on full basements with 80 or 90 percent furnaces, more often propane than natural gas. Manufactured and modular homes are a larger share of the housing here than in the rest of the county, and their package units and small downflow furnaces are a regular part of our work.

Ductwork sets the ceiling on what a new furnace can do in Willis. A variable-speed furnace with a modern ECM blower is only as good as the trunk lines and returns it connects to, and the 1950s–80s rural ranches and farmhouses with scattered 2000s builds in 48191 frequently have a single undersized return in the hallway and supply runs that were never balanced. On a replacement we measure static pressure with the old furnace running, and if it is high we tell you what the ductwork needs, whether that is an added return, a sealed trunk or a few resized branches. Sometimes the duct fix is a small add-on; sometimes it is the difference between a furnace that works and one that trips its limit switch all winter.

Willis 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–80s rural ranches and farmhouses with scattered 2000s builds near the Willis Road and Rawsonville Road corner and the Willis Post Office, the hot-water boilers in the older houses around the Willis crossroads at Willis and Rawsonville Roads, and the furnaces in newer subdivisions out toward Bunton Road corridor where builder-grade equipment hits its first real failures around year ten. The shop is 10 miles away, the truck carries the parts that fail, and a heating call in Willis ends with heat on the first visit far more often than not.

Local details we plan around in Willis

• DTE gas follows Rawsonville Road and Willis Road through the crossroads, but most side roads are propane-only, and we confirm fuel type before quoting any equipment.
• Private wells supply every home, and the water is hard with iron and sometimes sulfur, which eats water heater anodes and leaves sediment that needs flushing.
• Permits for Willis addresses go through Washtenaw County's building department, and inspections are scheduled on the county's southern-township rotation.
• Willis is as flat as anywhere in Washtenaw County, and drainage is slow enough that ditches and field tiles run most of the spring. Crawlspaces near Paint Creek and along the lower stretches of Bunton Road stay wet into June, and that moisture finds its way into ductwork and furnace cabinets. Winter wind crosses the fields unbroken, and summer brings long humid stretches with little shade outside the old farmstead windbreaks.