Service Agreements in Willis, Michigan

The Temprasure Service Agreement is the simplest way for a Willis homeowner to make sure the furnace and air conditioner get looked at every year by someone with a combustion analyzer and a set of gauges. It covers a fall furnace tune-up and a spring AC tune-up, priority scheduling when something fails, a discount on any repair, and reminders from us when a visit is due. Willis is about 18 minutes from our shop, so the two visits are easy to keep, and the 1950s–80s rural ranches and farmhouses with scattered 2000s builds equipment common around the Augusta-Sumpter township line is exactly the kind that benefits from a seasonal look before it is asked to run every night.

Willis houses and what that means for service agreements

The typical Willis house is a 1950s–80s ranch on a crawlspace or a shallow block basement, built by a farm family or an auto worker on a piece of split-off land, and heated by a furnace that has been replaced once or twice without anyone enlarging the ductwork. Many of these were originally on fuel oil, and we still find abandoned oil tanks in basements and oil-to-gas conversion furnaces that are long past their design life. The farmhouses along Bunton and Tuttle Hill Roads are 1870s–1920s two-stories with Michigan basements and a forced-air system threaded in after the fact, usually with cold upstairs bedrooms as the result. Scattered 1990s–2010s acreage homes are colonials and ranches on full basements with 80 or 90 percent furnaces, more often propane than natural gas. Manufactured and modular homes are a larger share of the housing here than in the rest of the county, and their package units and small downflow furnaces are a regular part of our work.

Safety is the quiet part of the agreement in Willis. The fall furnace visit includes a heat exchanger inspection and a carbon monoxide reading at the registers with the blower running, and in the 1950s–80s rural ranches and farmhouses with scattered 2000s builds homes around the Willis Post Office with gas furnaces in damp basements, that check is the one that matters most. Exchangers rust from the outside in a Michigan basement, and the first sign is usually a reading, not a symptom. Agreement customers in Willis get that reading every year, documented, along with a look at the water heater venting and the flue. We have shut furnaces down on that visit, shown the homeowner why, and been right. That is worth more than the discount.

We write more service agreements in Willis every year because the math is easy to see once a homeowner has lived through one no-heat night. Two visits a year, spring for the air conditioner and fall for the furnace, on equipment in the 1950s–80s rural ranches and farmhouses with scattered 2000s builds around Hitchingham Road area and the Bunton Road farm fields that is often fifteen years old. The DTE Energy furnaces get a combustion check and a cleaned flame sensor; the condensers near Rawsonville Road north toward Bemis get their capacitors measured and coils washed. Willis is about 18 minutes from the shop, and agreement customers go to the front of the line in a heat wave or a cold snap.

Local details we plan around in Willis

• DTE gas follows Rawsonville Road and Willis Road through the crossroads, but most side roads are propane-only, and we confirm fuel type before quoting any equipment.
• Spring flooding in crawlspaces near Paint Creek is routine, so we recommend elevating any furnace or water heater that sits below grade.
• Permits for Willis addresses go through Washtenaw County's building department, and inspections are scheduled on the county's southern-township rotation.
• Willis is as flat as anywhere in Washtenaw County, and drainage is slow enough that ditches and field tiles run most of the spring. Crawlspaces near Paint Creek and along the lower stretches of Bunton Road stay wet into June, and that moisture finds its way into ductwork and furnace cabinets. Winter wind crosses the fields unbroken, and summer brings long humid stretches with little shade outside the old farmstead windbreaks.