Ductwork Replacement in Pittsfield Township, Michigan

Some ductwork in Pittsfield Township is past sealing. The trunk in a 1990s–2010s subdivision colonials, with 1960s–70s ranches along the older corridors house near Lohr and Textile Road area has rusted through from decades of basement damp, the returns are panned joist bays that cannot be made tight from below, or the whole system was sized for a furnace half the size of what is in the basement now. Temprasure replaces ductwork across Washtenaw County with a designed system, not a copy of what was there: a Manual J load for every room, a Manual D duct design, sheet-metal trunks sealed with mastic, returns on every floor and a filter cabinet that does not choke the blower. Pittsfield Township is about 12 minutes from our shop, and the estimate is free.

Pittsfield Township houses and what that means for duct replacement

The heating-and-cooling story in Pittsfield is really the story of builder-grade equipment reaching its twenties. Thousands of colonials and two-story traditionals went up between about 1992 and 2012 on full poured-concrete basements, and most were handed over with a standard 80 percent furnace, a 10 to 13 SEER air conditioner, a bypass humidifier that nobody ever changed the pad on, and a 40-gallon atmospheric water heater. We are now replacing those systems in bulk, often two or three in the same subdivision in one week. The older pockets along Carpenter Road, Packard Road and Golfside Road are 1960s–70s ranches and tri-levels with crawlspaces or partial basements and ductwork that runs through unconditioned space. Townhouse and condo complexes near Ellsworth Road and State Street use furnaces in utility closets with limited combustion air. The newest homes off Textile Road came with 90-plus furnaces and R-410A condensers and are mostly still in warranty territory.

Two-story subdivision houses in Pittsfield Township from the 1990s–2010s subdivision colonials, with 1960s–70s ranches along the older corridors are the second most common replacement. The basement trunk is usually fine; the problem is the attic. Flex duct was pulled between the trusses in Lohr and Textile Road area twenty or thirty years ago, and it has since sagged, kinked, been crushed by stored boxes, chewed by mice and patched with tape, and the single return in the upstairs hall was never enough. Past a point, patching is throwing money at it. We replace the attic system with a designed layout: shorter, straighter runs, rigid metal where a chase allows, insulated flex kept to the last few feet, and a dedicated return on the second floor. The upstairs of a Pittsfield Township colonial in 48108 comes within a degree or two of the first floor when it is done.

We run duct work across Pittsfield Township, about 12 minutes from our Ypsilanti shop, and the jobs cluster in the 1990s–2010s subdivision colonials, with 1960s–70s ranches along the older corridors near Carpenter Road corridor, Lake Forest and Lillie Park. Leaky returns in a Washtenaw County basement pull in moisture and dust; undersized supplies starve the coil in summer and overheat the exchanger in winter. Sealing and repairing what is there solves most of it. Replacing a trunk or rerouting a run solves the rest, and we tell you which your house needs after measuring, not before.

Local details we plan around in Pittsfield Township

• Builder-era water heaters in the 1990s colonials are mostly original or on their second unit, and a lot of them are sharing a flue with the furnace that will need relining when the furnace goes to 90 percent.
• Garages here were built with the furnace room just inside, so combustion-air openings into the garage are a code issue we correct on many replacements.
• The whole township is on DTE gas and electric, with municipal water from Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti depending on the subdivision, so well water is rare except on a few older parcels south of Textile Road.
• Pittsfield is flat, open former farmland, and the newer subdivisions have not grown enough tree cover yet to matter, so south- and west-facing colonials bake in July and condensers run long hours. Winter wind sweeps across the fields from the west with little to slow it, which pushes heating loads on the exposed end units of every subdivision. Drainage is managed through retention ponds, and homes backing up to them run a bit damper in the basement.