Furnace Repair in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Every furnace repair call from Ann Arbor gets the same questions from us before we leave the shop: Is the switch on the side of the furnace on? Is the filter black? Does it try to light? Those thirty seconds on the phone sometimes fix the problem outright, and when they do not, they tell us which parts to have ready. We serve all of Ann Arbor, from Orchard Hills to the Nichols Arboretum area, at the same flat rate day or night, and 48103 addresses are well inside our same-day range. The truck is stocked for every brand you will find in a Washtenaw County basement.

Ann Arbor houses and what that means for furnace repair

Ann Arbor gives us almost every housing type in one zip code. The Old West Side and Old Fourth Ward are full of 1880s–1920s frame houses with stone or rubble foundations, fieldstone basements that stay damp, and furnaces that replaced boilers or gravity units sometime in the 1960s or 70s. Many of those homes still have cast-iron radiators fed by a boiler, and a surprising number have both a boiler and a separate forced-air system added for cooling. Burns Park and Ann Arbor Hills houses are larger 1920s–50s builds with plaster walls, so getting a second return or a bigger supply trunk in is slow work. The ranches and split-levels of the west side were built with 80,000 to 100,000 BTU furnaces that are now oversized for insulated versions of the same house. Condos near Briarwood and Pittsfield Village often have furnaces in closets or attics with tight clearances. Student rentals near campus run the oldest equipment in the city, and landlords routinely call us for emergency service and new-purchase inspections.

High-efficiency furnaces in Ann Arbor have a winter problem that 80 percent units never did: they make water. A 90-plus percent furnace condenses several gallons a day out of its exhaust, and that condensate has to drain through a trap, a line and usually a pump to get out of the basement. In the Ann Arbor, MI homes near Nichols Arboretum where that line runs through an unheated corner or out through a wall, it freezes during a cold snap, the pressure switch opens, and the furnace shuts down on the coldest night of the year. The exterior PVC vent can ice over the same way. We thaw it, clear it and then fix the routing or pitch so it does not happen again in February.

We run a lot of winter miles in Ann Arbor, and most of them end in a basement under one of the pre-war two-stories and 1950s–60s ranches, with university-era infill on every side that make up its streets near Dicken, Ann Arbor Hills and Eberwhite. 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 Argo Cascades, 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 16 minutes, any hour, at the same flat rate.

Local details we plan around in Ann Arbor

• The large number of boiler-and-radiator homes means we see hydronic work here far more than anywhere else in our radius.
• Fieldstone foundations in the oldest neighborhoods sweat enough that furnace cabinets and water heater bases corrode early unless they sit on blocks or a pad.
• The city's two historic districts, the Old West Side and the Old Fourth Ward, regulate exterior changes, so condenser placement on a street-facing wall often needs Historic District Commission sign-off.
• The Huron River cuts a deep valley through the north side of Ann Arbor, and the Northside, Lower Town and Gallup Park neighborhoods feel it as morning fog, heavier dew and basements that sweat in July. The downtown core holds heat with all its brick and pavement, so attics and upper floors there run several degrees hotter than the leafy blocks of Burns Park and the Old West Side, where mature oaks and maples shade roofs and cut peak cooling loads noticeably.