Pre-Purchase HVAC Inspections for Home Buyers in Ypsilanti and Southeast Michigan

The HVAC system in a house you are buying is the most expensive thing in it that a home inspector does not really inspect. A general home inspection in Michigan covers the whole house in two or three hours, and the furnace and air conditioner get a few minutes of that: the inspector confirms the furnace fires, notes the age off the label if it is legible, runs the AC if the weather allows, and writes something like "system operational, recommend evaluation by a licensed HVAC contractor." That sentence is in nearly every inspection report in Washtenaw County, and most buyers never follow up on it. Temprasure does the evaluation it refers to. We open the furnace, inspect the heat exchanger, run a combustion analysis, test the air conditioner's charge and capacitor, check the water heater and look at the ductwork, and we deliver a written report to you, the buyer, inside your inspection contingency window.

The market around here makes this matter more than it used to. Houses in Ann Arbor, Saline and Dexter still draw multiple offers, inspection periods are short, and buyers are waiving things they should not. In the older stock in Ypsilanti, Westland, Garden City and Wayne, the furnace may be the third one in the basement while the ductwork and water heater venting are original, and sellers often cannot tell you when anything was last serviced. Either way, the buyer is inheriting a furnace with an unknown heat exchanger, an air conditioner that may be an R-22 unit with a slow leak, a water heater at the end of its life, and ducts that explain why the upstairs bedrooms were cold during the showing. Knowing that before closing is worth a lot more than finding out the first week of January.

Our inspection is the same tune-up-level look we give our own customers' equipment, applied to a house you do not own yet. On the furnace: age from the serial number, heat exchanger inspection with a light and mirror and a combustion reading that reveals leakage, flame sensor and ignitor condition, inducer and venting, gas pressure, temperature rise, static pressure, filter sizing, and carbon monoxide at the registers. On the air conditioner, weather permitting: age, refrigerant type, capacitor and contactor condition, charge by superheat and subcooling, coil condition, temperature split, condensate drain and float switch, and the condenser pad and disconnect. On the water heater: age, tank condition, venting and draft, relief valve, anode where accessible, and signs of past leaks. On the ductwork: a walk of the basement, crawlspace and attic for disconnected runs, panned returns, missing insulation and the return sizing that drives most comfort complaints. Plus the thermostat, the humidifier if there is one, and the permit history if the township has it online.

The report is written for a buyer, not a technician. It tells you what each piece of equipment is, how old it is, what condition it is in, what it is likely to need and roughly when, and what we would do first if it were our house. It flags safety items separately, like a cracked heat exchanger, a water heater spilling flue gas or an AC disconnect wired wrong. It gives you what you need to negotiate a credit, ask for a repair, or walk away, and it becomes the baseline service history for the house if you buy it. We do not sell replacements off an inspection; if the equipment is old but sound, the report says so.

Timing is the practical part. Michigan purchase agreements typically allow a short inspection period, often a week to ten days, and the general home inspection eats part of that. We schedule pre-purchase inspections quickly inside our 20-mile radius, coordinate access with your agent or the listing agent, and get the report to you within a day of the visit so there is time to act on it. If the AC cannot be tested because it is 30 degrees outside, the report says what we could verify and what remains, and we tell you what to ask the seller for.