Service Agreements in Chelsea, Michigan

Most emergency calls we run in Chelsea are on systems nobody has opened in years. The flame sensor that locks the furnace out on a January night in 48118, the capacitor that strands an air conditioner near Chelsea Hospital on the first 90-degree day, the condensate drain that floods a McKinley Street neighborhood basement: every one of them shows up on a tune-up months before it fails. The Temprasure Service Agreement puts those two tune-ups on our calendar instead of yours, moves you to the front of the board when something does break, and takes a discount off the repair. One plan, no tiers, and nothing in it designed to sell you a new system.

Chelsea houses and what that means for service agreements

The in-town housing is dominated by 1890s–1940s two-stories, foursquares and bungalows on fieldstone or early block basements with plaster walls and ductwork retrofitted into a house that was designed for a coal furnace or stoves. Flues in these homes are often unlined brick, and we see a lot of 80 percent furnaces that have been venting into a chimney that should have been relined years ago. The post-war ring along McKinley Street and Freer Road is 1950s–70s ranches and capes, some on slabs, with electric baseboard still present in a few. Chelsea Fairways, Heritage Pointe and the other 1990s–2010s subdivisions are colonials and ranches on full basements with builder-grade 80 percent furnaces and single-stage air conditioners that are now hitting replacement age. Outside the city on Werkner, Waterloo and Cavanaugh Lake Roads, we see lakefront cottages that were winterized, farmhouses with multiple additions, and newer acreage homes on propane and well water.

Winter in Washtenaw County is the argument for priority scheduling. When a polar vortex stretch settles over Chelsea and the overnight lows hit single digits, every furnace that was going to fail that year fails in the same week, and every HVAC shop in the area is working through a list. Agreement customers in Chelsea are at the top of that list. A no-heat call from 48118 on the agreement goes ahead of the routine work, which in a cold snap is usually the difference between the same day and the day after. We cannot promise what the weather does to the board, but we can promise where you sit on it, and for a household with kids, older family members or a house in McKinley Street neighborhood that will freeze its pipes, that is the point.

A lot of the homes we see in Chelsea are the 1890s–1920s village homes and 1990s–2010s subdivisions on the edges that changed hands recently, and the new owners near Dexter-Chelsea Road corridor, Freer Road area and the Chelsea Clock Tower usually have the same question: what did I actually buy? Our inspections answer that with a combustion test, a heat exchanger check, refrigerant readings, duct static and a written report. Our service agreement keeps answering it twice a year afterward. The shop is 25 miles away, and maintenance customers in Chelsea get priority scheduling when the weather turns.

Local details we plan around in Chelsea

• Permits for city addresses go through Chelsea's building department, while Lima, Sylvan and Lyndon Township addresses go through Washtenaw County.
• Chelsea is in Consumers Energy gas territory rather than DTE, which matters for rebate programs and for who we call about a meter or service line issue.
• Electric service is split between Consumers Energy and DTE depending on the exact address, and homes just outside town may be on one for gas and the other for electric.
• Chelsea is high and open compared with the river towns to the east, and it gets more wind and a bit more snow than Ypsilanti, with polar vortex nights that run a few degrees colder. The lakes in the Waterloo Recreation Area and around Cavanaugh Lake add summer humidity for the homes closest to them. Heavy tree cover downtown and on the older residential streets shades roofs in July, while the newer subdivisions on the east side have little mature canopy yet.