Furnace Installation & Replacement in Chelsea, Michigan

A furnace replacement in Chelsea is a 20-year decision made in a basement, usually under some time pressure because the old one quit in January. Temprasure tries to take the pressure off. If you are without heat, we can set temporary heat and get equipment quickly. If you have time, we walk the house, run the load calculation, look at the chimney, the gas line and the condensate situation, and give you two or three options in writing with one flat price each. Chelsea, MI is well inside our radius, the owner does the install, and the Washtenaw County inspection is part of the job.

Chelsea houses and what that means for furnace installation

The in-town housing is dominated by 1890s–1940s two-stories, foursquares and bungalows on fieldstone or early block basements with plaster walls and ductwork retrofitted into a house that was designed for a coal furnace or stoves. Flues in these homes are often unlined brick, and we see a lot of 80 percent furnaces that have been venting into a chimney that should have been relined years ago. The post-war ring along McKinley Street and Freer Road is 1950s–70s ranches and capes, some on slabs, with electric baseboard still present in a few. Chelsea Fairways, Heritage Pointe and the other 1990s–2010s subdivisions are colonials and ranches on full basements with builder-grade 80 percent furnaces and single-stage air conditioners that are now hitting replacement age. Outside the city on Werkner, Waterloo and Cavanaugh Lake Roads, we see lakefront cottages that were winterized, farmhouses with multiple additions, and newer acreage homes on propane and well water.

The side-wall vent on a condensing furnace needs a good spot, and Chelsea lots do not always offer one. Narrow setbacks between the 1890s–1920s village homes and 1990s–2010s subdivisions on the edges on the older blocks near Chelsea Hospital, decks built right over the likely vent location, and bedroom windows on the only clear wall all complicate things. The vent has to stay clear of snow drifts, which in a Washtenaw County winter means well above grade, and it cannot dump exhaust where it will be pulled back into the intake or into a neighbor's window. We walk the outside of the house during the free estimate and show you exactly where the intake and exhaust will terminate before you sign anything.

Chelsea 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 1890s–1920s village homes and 1990s–2010s subdivisions on the edges near the Chelsea Clock Tower and the Purple Rose Theatre, the hot-water boilers in the older houses around M-52 north of town, and the furnaces in newer subdivisions out toward Dexter-Chelsea Road corridor where builder-grade equipment hits its first real failures around year ten. The shop is 25 miles away, the truck carries the parts that fail, and a heating call in Chelsea ends with heat on the first visit far more often than not.

Local details we plan around in Chelsea

• Unlined brick chimneys in the historic neighborhoods are the single most common venting problem we find during furnace replacements in town.
• Permits for city addresses go through Chelsea's building department, while Lima, Sylvan and Lyndon Township addresses go through Washtenaw County.
• Outside the city limits, propane furnaces and water heaters are routine, and propane conversions and regulator problems are a normal part of our Chelsea calls.
• Chelsea is high and open compared with the river towns to the east, and it gets more wind and a bit more snow than Ypsilanti, with polar vortex nights that run a few degrees colder. The lakes in the Waterloo Recreation Area and around Cavanaugh Lake add summer humidity for the homes closest to them. Heavy tree cover downtown and on the older residential streets shades roofs in July, while the newer subdivisions on the east side have little mature canopy yet.