Furnace Maintenance & Tune-Ups in Dexter, Michigan

Temprasure runs fall furnace maintenance across Dexter from September until the first real cold, and the visit is the same whether the furnace is a new two-stage unit in a 48130 subdivision or a 1990s 80 percent furnace in a 1990s–2000s subdivision homes around an 1830s village core house near Dexter-Ann Arbor Road corridor. Burners, ignition, safeties, exchanger, combustion, gas pressure, airflow, and on condensing furnaces the condensate and venting. You get the readings in writing and flat-rate prices on anything we recommend, with no pressure to replace a furnace that is doing fine. Service-agreement members across Washtenaw County get first pick of dates.

Dexter houses and what that means for furnace maintenance

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.

Rental housing around Dexter is where deferred furnace maintenance does the most damage. A furnace in a Dexter-Ann Arbor Road corridor rental that has not been opened in six years is running on a filter that is black, a flame sensor that is barely signaling and a burner compartment that may be a mouse nest. Temprasure handles tune-ups for landlords across Washtenaw County: we schedule with the tenant, do the full visit including the combustion analysis and exchanger inspection, replace the filter, and send the owner a report with readings and photos. For owners with several Dexter properties, one service agreement covers all of them with priority scheduling when a tenant calls about no heat.

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 Dexter Crossing and Westridge to the newer builds near Baker Road corridor, 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

• 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.
• 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.
• The city proper is on DTE gas, but Consumers Energy territory begins just west of town and many addresses with a Dexter mailing address are actually on Consumers or on propane.
• 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.