Emergency Heating Repair in Ann Arbor, Michigan

When the furnace quits in Ann Arbor on a night the forecast says minus 8, you need someone who picks up. Temprasure is open 24 hours, Al answers the phone himself, and Ann Arbor, MI is about 16 minutes from our shop in Ypsilanti. The truck carries the ignitors, flame sensors, pressure switches, capacitors and boards that take furnaces down in the dark, and we charge the same flat rate at 2 a.m. as at 2 p.m. If someone in your home near Georgetown is elderly, an infant or medically fragile, say so and you move to the front of the line.

Ann Arbor houses and what that means for emergency heating

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.

Rentals and older adults are the two groups in Ann Arbor who most often end up without heat at night and without a plan. A tenant in a Ann Arbor, MI apartment whose landlord is not answering at 11 p.m. can call us directly and we will coordinate approval. An elderly homeowner near the Kerrytown Market whose furnace quit and whose family is out of town can call us and we will come, explain everything patiently, and not sell them a furnace they do not need. Our reviews mention Al's patience with elderly and non-English-speaking customers, and a night call in a cold house is exactly when that matters.

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 Old West Side, Orchard Hills and Ann Arbor Hills. 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 Michigan Stadium, 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.
• Ann Arbor has its own building department with its own mechanical permit process, and inspectors here want to see combustion air, condensate routing and flue sizing done by the book.
• 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.