HVAC Maintenance in Salem Township, Michigan

If you own a Salem Township rental or manage a few houses in 48175, HVAC maintenance is how you avoid a tenant calling you at midnight in February. Temprasure schedules fall and spring visits for every unit, coordinates access with tenants, and sends you a report per property with the readings and any recommended repairs. We know the 1970s–2000s acreage homes and estate builds with century-old farmhouses between them rental stock around Brookville Road area, the furnaces that were installed in batches and fail in batches, and the condensate problems that come with damp Washtenaw County basements. A maintained system is also one that a DTE Energy rebate or a buyer's inspector has no complaint about.

Salem Township houses and what that means for hvac maintenance

Salem's houses are nearly all custom or owner-built rather than tract, and they are spread thin, so our calls here are long drives between very different problems. The 1850s–1920s farmhouses in and around the village have Michigan basements, rough stone walls and ductwork added in the 1960s or later, often with a furnace that is serving an addition it was never sized for. The 1970s–90s ranches and split-levels along Currie, Tower and Angle Roads sit on crawlspaces or walkout basements and frequently started life on fuel oil or propane. The 1995–2015 estate homes near Napier Road and along North Territorial are large two-stories with two or more furnaces, zoned systems and finished walkouts, commonly on propane with a buried tank. Many properties have a heated barn, workshop or pole building with its own unit heater. Older homes with converted oil furnaces and unlined chimneys are the most frequent safety finding we make here.

Combustion safety is the part of Salem Township maintenance we take most seriously, and the housing explains why. The 1970s–2000s acreage homes and estate builds with century-old farmhouses between them around Brookville Road area almost all have gas furnaces in basements that stay damp from a sump pit or a Michigan-basement foundation, and moisture rusts a heat exchanger from the outside while the furnace looks fine from the front. On every Salem Township furnace tune-up we inspect the exchanger with a light and mirror, run the combustion analyzer, and read carbon monoxide at the registers with the blower running. A furnace that passes gets a report that says so. A furnace that does not gets shut down with the evidence shown to you, and we have made that call in Washtenaw County basements more than once without ever being wrong about it.

Our trucks are in Salem Township most weeks, because Washtenaw County is where a large share of our work is and 48175 is a short run from Ypsilanti. The 1970s–2000s acreage homes and estate builds with century-old farmhouses between them that line the streets near Currie Road area and the South Lyon rail trail at the township's north edge have usually been through two or three furnaces and at least one air conditioner, often installed by different companies with different ideas about ductwork, and sorting that out is what a whole-system visit is for. We check the furnace, the coil, the condenser, the thermostat and the ducts as one system, because in a Salem Township house they fail as one system.

Local details we plan around in Salem Township

• Older farmhouses and 1970s ranches that were converted from fuel oil often still have the original oil chimney, and lining it is a standard part of any gas furnace replacement.
• Power outages on the long rural lines are frequent in ice storms, and generator transfer wiring for the furnace and well pump is one of the most common questions we get here.
• DTE gas reaches a few corridors near the village and the Plymouth border, but propane is the dominant fuel across the township and many homes have large buried tanks.
• Salem is higher and more rolling than the townships along the Huron, and it is exposed to wind from every direction across open fields, with winter gusts that make the northwest corner of any house the cold corner. Snowfall runs slightly heavier here than in Ypsilanti because of the elevation and the distance from the river valley. Woodlots and the Johnson Creek drain hold summer humidity in the low spots, while the higher ground stays drier.