Heating Repair in Augusta Township, Michigan

Every winter, the first polar vortex night produces a wave of no-heat calls from Augusta Township, and most of them are the same handful of failures: a frozen condensate line on a 96 percent furnace, a cracked ignitor on a 20-year-old 80 percent unit, a boiler with air locking the upstairs radiators, a heat pump stuck on backup heat with the house losing ground. Temprasure carries the parts for all of them, covers every street from the Sumpter Township line to Lincoln High School, and does not charge extra because it is 2 a.m. or a holiday. Tell us what heats the house and we will tell you what to check while we drive.

Augusta Township houses and what that means for heating repair

Augusta's housing is a long timeline laid out along the roads. The 1860s–1920s farmhouses have Michigan basements, two or three additions and forced-air systems that were added long after the house was built, usually with ductwork that never reached the upstairs properly. The 1960s–80s ranches and split-levels that make up the biggest share of the township sit on crawlspaces or shallow basements, with furnaces in hallway closets or utility rooms and ductwork under the floor that has collected decades of moisture and rodent traffic. Newer acreage homes and the subdivisions off Whittaker and Bemis Roads are 1995–2015 colonials and ranches on full poured basements with 80 or 90 percent furnaces, many on propane, and condensers sized by the builder's rule of thumb rather than a load calculation. Manufactured homes with package units or small furnaces are common on the back roads. A good number of properties also have a pole barn or shop with a hanging heater we end up servicing.

Heat pumps are newer to Augusta Township than furnaces, and the winter failures are unfamiliar to most homeowners. A heat pump paired with a gas furnace in one of the 48191 subdivisions should hand off to the furnace somewhere in the 25-to-35-degree range, and when the changeover is set wrong or the outdoor sensor fails, the house either runs the heat pump into inefficiency or runs the furnace all the time. A heat pump with electric backup that loses its defrost cycle ices over and quietly switches to strip heat, which shows up as a DTE Energy bill that doubled. We repair the defrost board, the sensor and the reversing valve, and we verify the staging so the system is actually using the cheaper heat source.

Heating calls from Augusta Township come in two waves: the first real cold night in November and whatever stretch of January the polar vortex decides to visit. Both times we are 18 minutes away with ignitors, flame sensors, pressure switches and inducer motors on the truck. The 1960s–90s rural ranches and newer acreage builds on former farmland around Talladay Road area and Stony Creek Road area mostly burn DTE Energy natural gas, and the furnaces in them are old enough that a heat exchanger inspection is part of every visit, not an upsell. Near the Stony Creek bottomland and out toward Whittaker Road corridor, we also see high-efficiency furnaces whose exterior vents ice over in a storm, which looks like a dead furnace and is a ten-minute fix.

Local details we plan around in Augusta Township

• DTE gas mains follow Whittaker Road, Willis Road and a few others, but a large share of the township's homes run on propane, and we size and set up equipment accordingly.
• Septic systems serve nearly every home, and condensate from a high-efficiency furnace should be neutralized or routed away from the septic line.
• The whole township is on private wells with hard, iron-heavy water, so water heater sediment, failed anodes and humidifier scale are standard findings.
• Augusta is low, flat and open, and the land along Stony Creek and Paint Creek holds water well into spring, so basements and crawlspaces in the township's middle run damp for months. Winter wind crosses the fields with nothing in the way, and the exposed north and west sides of farmhouses and acreage homes carry heavier heating loads than their square footage would suggest. Summer humidity is high across the creek bottoms, and shade is scarce outside the older farmsteads with their windbreaks.