Furnace Installation & Replacement in Dexter, Michigan

A furnace replacement in Dexter 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. Dexter, MI is well inside our radius, the owner does the install, and the Washtenaw County inspection is part of the job.

Dexter houses and what that means for furnace installation

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.

Ductwork sets the ceiling on what a new furnace can do in Dexter. A variable-speed furnace with a modern ECM blower is only as good as the trunk lines and returns it connects to, and the 1990s–2000s subdivision homes around an 1830s village core in 48130 frequently have a single undersized return in the hallway and supply runs that were never balanced. On a replacement we measure static pressure with the old furnace running, and if it is high we tell you what the ductwork needs, whether that is an added return, a sealed trunk or a few resized branches. Sometimes the duct fix is a small add-on; sometimes it is the difference between a furnace that works and one that trips its limit switch all winter.

A no-heat call from 48130 gets priority in winter, and the drive from Ypsilanti to Dexter is about 32 minutes. The houses here, from the 1990s–2000s subdivision homes around an 1830s village core around Mast Road area and Dexter Crossing to the newer builds near Grand Street and the historic core, run almost entirely on DTE Energy, and the failures we see are the same ones we see everywhere in Southeast Michigan: dirty flame sensors, failed hot-surface ignitors, stuck pressure switches, cracked exchangers on furnaces that should have been retired. We diagnose with a combustion analyzer and a manometer, not a flashlight, and we show you the reading before we quote the repair.

Local details we plan around in Dexter

• Many of the 1990s subdivision homes have a furnace and water heater sharing an undersized masonry chimney that needs a liner when either appliance is upgraded.
• Mechanical permits in the city go through Dexter's building department, while township addresses go through Washtenaw County, and the two have slightly different inspection habits.
• 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.