Furnace Maintenance & Tune-Ups in Plymouth, Michigan

What does a furnace tune-up in Plymouth actually involve? With Temprasure, the burners come out and get cleaned, a meter goes on the flame sensor, a manometer goes on the gas valve, a combustion analyzer goes in the supply air, and a camera goes into the heat exchanger. Then you get a sheet with the readings and a straight answer about what is healthy, what is marginal and what the furnace in your 1880s–1940s historic two-stories and bungalows with 1950s–60s ranches on the edges home needs before winter. That is the service we run across 48170 and the rest of Plymouth, MI every fall.

Plymouth houses and what that means for furnace maintenance

Plymouth's housing is the oldest in our Wayne County area and the most sensitive to how a replacement is done. The historic blocks around Kellogg Park and in Old Village are 1880s to 1920s two-stories with Michigan basements, fieldstone foundations, and ductwork that was retrofitted when the original coal or gravity furnace came out. Hot-water radiators and boilers are still in service in some of these houses, and in others the radiators came out but the duct runs they were replaced with are undersized and noisy. The 1920s to 40s bungalows along Penniman, Harvey and Ann Arbor Trail have small basements, short duct runs and finished attics. On the south and west edges toward the township line, 1950s and 60s ranches on block basements make up the newer stock. Central air is an add-on nearly everywhere in the city, and in the historic district the condenser location is a planning conversation as much as a mechanical one. Water heaters are gas tanks in low, often damp basements.

High-efficiency furnaces in Plymouth need a different kind of maintenance than the 80 percent units they replaced. A 96 percent furnace condenses water out of its exhaust all winter, and in the newer Plymouth homes near Old Village that water runs through a trap, a line and often a pump before it leaves the basement. By the end of a heating season the trap is full of sludge, and a sludge-filled trap trips the pressure switch on the first cold night of the next winter. On every condensing-furnace tune-up in 48170 we flush the trap and line, test the pump, check the neutralizer if there is one, and walk outside to confirm the PVC vent is pitched and clear so it does not ice over in a Wayne County cold snap.

We run a lot of winter miles in Plymouth, and most of them end in a basement under one of the 1880s–1940s historic two-stories and bungalows with 1950s–60s ranches on the edges that make up its streets near Main Street south of downtown, Sheldon Road neighborhoods and Starkweather Street. DTE Energy service reaches nearly every home here, so the equipment is familiar: 80 percent and 90-plus percent gas furnaces, a few boilers near Kellogg Park, and the occasional propane furnace at the rural edge. What differs house to house is the ductwork and the wiring, and that is where a careful technician earns the dispatch fee. We arrive from Ypsilanti in about 24 minutes, any hour, at the same flat rate.

Local details we plan around in Plymouth

• Michigan basements with fieldstone walls in Old Village and around Kellogg Park are low and damp, and we set replacement furnaces and water heaters on raised pads as standard practice.
• The city of Plymouth has historic district review for exterior changes on designated properties, which can affect where a condenser or vent termination is allowed on a street-facing wall.
• Knob-and-tube remnants and early 60-amp services turn up in the historic blocks, and adding air conditioning often starts with an electrician.
• Plymouth sits in the Middle Rouge valley, and the low ground in Old Village and along Hines Park near Wilcox Lake runs humid, with basements that take on water in spring and after heavy summer storms. The dense old tree canopy downtown keeps summer afternoons cooler than the open subdivisions in the township but traps dampness and drops leaves into every condenser. Winters are typical Southeast Michigan freeze-thaw with the occasional deep cold snap.