Heating, cooling and water heater service in Augusta Township, MI

About Augusta Township

Augusta Township is the southeast corner of Washtenaw County, directly south of Ypsilanti Township, and we reach most of it in fifteen to twenty minutes by heading down Whittaker Road or Rawsonville Road from the shop. It is farm country with a lot of new houses in it. The Lincoln Consolidated Schools campus on Willis Road, with the high school, middle school and elementary all on one site, is the closest thing the township has to a center, and the small crossroads communities of Whittaker and Willis each have a post office and a handful of older homes. Most of the land is still in corn, soybeans and hay, with Stony Creek and Paint Creek winding through low ground in the middle. From the 1990s on, farmers sold off road frontage and larger developers put subdivisions along Whittaker, Bemis and Tuttle Hill Roads, so a drive down any main road now alternates between a 1900 farmhouse, a 1975 ranch and a 2005 colonial on an acre. Residents are a mix of generational farming families, Ford and auto-supplier workers, and families who wanted a Lincoln school address and more land than Ypsilanti Township offered.

What Augusta Township houses need from an HVAC company

Augusta's housing is a long timeline laid out along the roads. The 1860s–1920s farmhouses have Michigan basements, two or three additions and forced-air systems that were added long after the house was built, usually with ductwork that never reached the upstairs properly. The 1960s–80s ranches and split-levels that make up the biggest share of the township sit on crawlspaces or shallow basements, with furnaces in hallway closets or utility rooms and ductwork under the floor that has collected decades of moisture and rodent traffic. Newer acreage homes and the subdivisions off Whittaker and Bemis Roads are 1995–2015 colonials and ranches on full poured basements with 80 or 90 percent furnaces, many on propane, and condensers sized by the builder's rule of thumb rather than a load calculation. Manufactured homes with package units or small furnaces are common on the back roads. A good number of properties also have a pole barn or shop with a hanging heater we end up servicing.

Weather and the equipment it tests

Augusta is low, flat and open, and the land along Stony Creek and Paint Creek holds water well into spring, so basements and crawlspaces in the township's middle run damp for months. Winter wind crosses the fields with nothing in the way, and the exposed north and west sides of farmhouses and acreage homes carry heavier heating loads than their square footage would suggest. Summer humidity is high across the creek bottoms, and shade is scarce outside the older farmsteads with their windbreaks.

Local details we plan around

• DTE gas mains follow Whittaker Road, Willis Road and a few others, but a large share of the township's homes run on propane, and we size and set up equipment accordingly.
• The whole township is on private wells with hard, iron-heavy water, so water heater sediment, failed anodes and humidifier scale are standard findings.
• Septic systems serve nearly every home, and condensate from a high-efficiency furnace should be neutralized or routed away from the septic line.
• Mechanical permits for Augusta addresses go through Washtenaw County, and the county inspector covers the southern townships on a rotating schedule.
• High water tables along Stony Creek and Paint Creek flood crawlspaces, and we find rusted-through duct trunks and water-damaged furnaces in those areas after wet springs.
• Long rural power lines mean regular outages, and many homeowners here have or want a generator transfer setup for their furnace and well pump.