Furnace Maintenance & Tune-Ups in Ypsilanti, Michigan

Furnaces in Ypsilanti work hard. A Washtenaw County winter puts well over 6,000 heating degree days on a furnace, and in the pre-war two-stories and 1920s–60s bungalows and ranches around Downtown Ypsilanti 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.

Ypsilanti houses and what that means for furnace maintenance

From a heating-and-cooling standpoint, Ypsilanti is one of the more varied cities we work in. The Historic East Side and Normal Park are full of balloon-framed two-stories with Michigan basements, original gravity-furnace ductwork that was later converted to forced air, and radiators in a surprising number of houses that still run on hot-water boilers or were converted decades ago. The 1920s–40s bungalows around Prospect Park and West Cross usually have short, undersized duct runs and a furnace crammed into a low basement corner. The ranches and capes south of Michigan Avenue and toward Heritage Park tend to be 1950s–60s builds with crawlspaces or shallow basements, and most of them have had two or three furnaces in their lifetime. Rentals near EMU often have the oldest, most neglected equipment in the city. Central air was almost never original on anything built before 1980 here, so a lot of condensers are add-ons sitting on undersized circuits.

Damp basements are the maintenance story in Ypsilanti. The older pre-war two-stories and 1920s–60s bungalows and ranches near Downtown Ypsilanti sit on Michigan basements or block foundations that sweat all summer, and by October the burners on an 80 percent furnace are coated in rust, the flame sensor is corroded and the bottom of the heat exchanger has been sitting in humid air for five months. Our fall tune-up for these Ypsilanti, MI homes starts with the burner assembly and the exchanger because that is where the damage shows up first. We clean what can be cleaned, measure what can be measured, and tell you when the basement is winning so you can plan a replacement or a dehumidifier instead of being surprised by a CO reading.

We run a lot of winter miles in Ypsilanti, and most of them end in a basement under one of the pre-war two-stories and 1920s–60s bungalows and ranches that make up its streets near Midtown, West Cross and Depot Town. 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 Depot Town's Freighthouse, 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 8 minutes, any hour, at the same flat rate.

Local details we plan around in Ypsilanti

• Many of the older houses have knob-and-tube or early Romex wiring, and a new condenser or heat pump often needs a dedicated circuit run before it can be installed.
• EMU-area rental turnover means inspections for new landlords and investors are a regular part of our work here.
• Most homes in the city are on DTE natural gas, but a few pockets near the township line still heat with propane or electric.
• Ypsilanti sits in the Huron River valley, so the low-lying neighborhoods near Riverside Park and Frog Island see heavier humidity and foggier mornings than the higher ground around the Water Tower and College Heights. Summers run humid rather than scorching; winters bring repeated freeze-thaw cycles rather than one long deep freeze, and the lake-effect snow that hammers the west side of the state mostly misses us.