Furnace Maintenance & Tune-Ups in Saline, Michigan

Furnaces in Saline work hard. A Washtenaw County winter puts well over 6,000 heating degree days on a furnace, and in the 1990s–2000s subdivision colonials around a 19th-century downtown around Brookside that furnace is often 15 to 25 years old and venting into a damp basement. Temprasure's maintenance visit is built for exactly that equipment. We inspect the exchanger every year because that is where old furnaces fail, we test the cheap parts that take them down, and we tell you honestly where the furnace stands so a replacement, if one is coming, happens on your schedule rather than during a polar vortex.

Saline houses and what that means for furnace maintenance

Saline's housing splits by distance from downtown. Within a few blocks of Michigan Avenue and around the Mill Pond, homes are 1870s–1930s two-stories and foursquares on stone or early block basements, many with a furnace that was swapped in during the 1980s and is now on its third owner. The ring beyond that, including the Harper Drive and Old Creek Drive neighborhoods, is 1950s–70s ranches and split-levels, some on crawlspaces, with ductwork that was never sized for central air. The bulk of our work here is in the 1990s–2000s subdivisions off Maple and Ann Arbor-Saline Roads: large colonials on poured basements with two-zone systems or two separate furnaces, 80 percent equipment and single-stage condensers that are now hitting twenty years. Saline builders used a lot of fan-powered humidifiers, and many are still running with the original solenoid and a pad that has never been changed.

High-efficiency furnaces in Saline 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 Saline homes near Curtiss Park 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 48176 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 Washtenaw County cold snap.

In Saline 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 12 miles away matters. We know the 1990s–2000s subdivision colonials around a 19th-century downtown along Michigan Avenue east of downtown and the basements near Mill Pond Park, we carry parts for every brand that went into Washtenaw County homes, and we charge the same flat rate at midnight that we charge at noon. Saline has about 9,000 in the city, with a much larger school district around it 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 Saline

• Saline has its own municipal water system drawn from wells, and the water is notably hard, so water heater flushing and humidifier scale are bigger issues here than in Ann Arbor.
• The downtown historic area has older houses with shared chimney flues, and a furnace upgrade to 90 percent often leaves an orphaned water heater that needs a liner.
• The city issues its own mechanical permits through its building department, and a replacement furnace or condenser is expected to be permitted and inspected.
• The Mill Pond and the Saline River keep the north and west sides of town humid in summer, and basements near Curtiss Park are among the dampest we see in the county. South and east of downtown the land flattens into open farm country, and the subdivisions along Textile Road take steady west wind in winter with little tree cover to break it. The city sits far enough from Lake Erie and Lake Michigan that snowfall is moderate and winter is mostly about freeze-thaw cycling.