Thermostat Installation in Dexter, Michigan

If your Dexter home has a two-stage or variable-speed furnace, a heat pump with gas backup, or a whole-home humidifier, the thermostat is doing more than turning the heat on and off. It decides when the second stage runs, when the heat pump hands off to the furnace at a Washtenaw County design temperature, and whether the humidifier holds the house at a sensible winter level. Temprasure sets all of that up on thermostat installs in Dexter, from the 1990s–2000s subdivision homes around an 1830s village core homes around Dexter-Huron Metropark to the newer construction in Mill Creek neighborhood, and we do it in one visit at a flat price. Most of what we install qualifies for the DTE Energy smart thermostat rebate, and we handle the enrollment.

Dexter houses and what that means for thermostats

In the historic core around Grand Street, Fifth Street and Broad Street, we work on 1840s–1910s frame and brick homes with fieldstone basements, low ceilings and ductwork that has been reworked three or four times. Some of these still have radiators on a boiler and a separate air handler for cooling tucked into an attic. The subdivisions that make up most of Dexter's housing were built between roughly 1994 and 2008. Huron Farms and Dexter Crossing are two-story colonials and cape-style homes on full poured basements, usually with an original 80 percent furnace, a 10 to 12 SEER condenser, and a water heater that has already been replaced once. Westridge and the newer phases carry 90-plus furnaces and two-stage equipment. Beyond the city line, Mast Road, Island Lake Road and North Territorial have 1970s–90s custom homes and older farmhouses on well, septic and sometimes propane, with walkout basements that bring their own moisture issues.

Two-stage and variable-speed equipment in Dexter is often running at a fraction of what it can because of the thermostat. The subdivisions in 48130 that were built or re-equipped in the 1990s–2000s subdivision homes around an 1830s village core got two-stage furnaces and air conditioners, and a lot of them were paired with a basic single-stage thermostat that never calls for high. On a cold Washtenaw County morning the furnace plods along on low for an hour; on a humid July afternoon the air conditioner never ramps up enough to pull moisture out of the house. We wire the second stage, set the staging logic in the thermostat rather than leaving it to the furnace board's timer, and set the dehumidification call so the system runs the way the equipment was designed to in Dexter.

With about 4,500 in the city, with roughly 15,000 more in the surrounding townships residents and housing that runs from the 1990s–2000s subdivision homes around an 1830s village core around Westridge to the newer streets near Baker Road corridor, Dexter keeps us busy year-round. The equipment is on DTE Energy for heat and DTE Energy for cooling, the basements near Mill Creek Park are prone to the same moisture issues as the rest of Washtenaw County, and the ductwork in a lot of these houses was never sized for the air conditioner that was bolted on later. We are 19 miles away, we service every brand, and we quote a flat rate before we start.

Local details we plan around in Dexter

• The city proper is on DTE gas, but Consumers Energy territory begins just west of town and many addresses with a Dexter mailing address are actually on Consumers or on propane.
• Dexter's municipal water is softened at the plant, but homes outside the city on private wells have very hard water with iron that attacks water heater anodes quickly.
• The Huron River and Mill Creek floodplain means basements in the oldest part of town have flooded more than once, and we routinely find equipment that was underwater.
• Dexter sits where Mill Creek drops into the Huron River, and the lowest streets near the Cider Mill and Mill Creek Park hold fog and humidity on summer mornings. The town is far enough west that it picks up a little more snow than Ypsilanti and feels polar vortex cold snaps a degree or two harder. Hills and heavy oak cover around Gordon Hall and the metroparks shade a lot of roofs, which holds down cooling loads compared with the open subdivisions to the south.