Furnace Repair in Whitmore Lake, Michigan

Temprasure has fixed a lot of furnaces in Whitmore Lake, MI that another company said were done. Not because the other company was lying, but because a furnace that will not stay lit looks terrifying to a homeowner and a quick replacement quote is easy to write. We diagnose with a manometer, a meter and a combustion analyzer, inspect the heat exchanger on every Whitmore Lake call, and tell you exactly what failed. For Washtenaw County homes on DTE Energy gas, that usually means a repair in the low hundreds and a furnace that runs another five winters.

Whitmore Lake houses and what that means for furnace repair

Lakefront homes on East Shore Drive and along Whitmore Lake Road are the defining housing type: 1920s–60s cottages that were raised, expanded and insulated over the years, with furnaces in crawlspaces, half-basements or closets, ductwork routed through whatever chase was available, and water heaters wedged under stairs. Many have had a second floor added onto a frame that was built for one, and the ductwork rarely followed. Behind the lake, the older streets off Main Street hold 1940s–70s ranches and bungalows on crawlspaces, some of which started on fuel oil. The 1990s–2010s subdivisions off Barker, Spencer and Nine Mile Roads are colonials on full poured basements with builder-grade 80 percent furnaces, single-stage condensers and bypass humidifiers nearing replacement. Outlying homes on North Territorial and Six Mile are acreage builds and farmhouses on propane and wells. High water tables around both lakes keep below-grade equipment at risk.

The 1920s–60s lake cottages converted to year-round homes, with 1990s–2010s subdivisions behind them that dominate Whitmore Lake were often built with a furnace sized for a house with no insulation, single-pane windows and an unfinished basement. Decades of upgrades later, that same furnace, or its like-for-like replacement from the 1990s, is badly oversized, and oversized furnaces short cycle. Every short cycle stresses the ignitor and the heat exchanger, and that is why so many Whitmore Lake repair calls from East Shore Drive involve a cracked ignitor on a furnace that is otherwise healthy. We fix the ignitor, but we also check the temperature rise and the blower speed, because sometimes a simple adjustment gets a furnace cycling properly and makes the next ignitor last twice as long.

Whitmore Lake 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 1920s–60s lake cottages converted to year-round homes, with 1990s–2010s subdivisions behind them near Whitmore Lake High School and Northfield Township Hall, the hot-water boilers in the older houses around Spencer Road area, and the furnaces in newer subdivisions out toward Six Mile Road corridor where builder-grade equipment hits its first real failures around year ten. The shop is 18 miles away, the truck carries the parts that fail, and a heating call in Whitmore Lake ends with heat on the first visit far more often than not.

Local details we plan around in Whitmore Lake

• Almost all homes are on private wells, and the water around the lakes is hard with iron, so water heaters and humidifiers need regular attention.
• Lake cottages with crawlspaces that sit near the water table are the most common place we find rusted furnace cabinets, flooded condensate pumps and failed water heater bottoms.
• The community sits on the Washtenaw-Livingston line, so some Whitmore Lake addresses are governed by Northfield Township and others by Green Oak Township, and permits go through different offices.
• Whitmore Lake and Horseshoe Lake dominate the local weather for the homes around them: summer humidity is high, morning fog is common from May through October, and basements and crawlspaces near the shoreline rarely dry out. The lakes also moderate the first freezes slightly, but by January the open ice and surrounding fields let northwest wind blow across unbroken. Snow runs a bit heavier here than in Ypsilanti because of the slightly higher ground and the township's position farther from the Huron valley.