Thermostat Installation in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Temprasure has installed and repaired thermostats across Washtenaw County for years, and Ann Arbor is a regular stop. The job takes under an hour when the wiring is sound and a little longer when a common wire has to be added or a new cable fished through a pre-war two-stories and 1950s–60s ranches, with university-era infill on every side wall near Lansdowne. Either way the price is quoted before we start and does not change. We carry the common smart thermostat models on the truck, install anything you have already bought if it fits your system, and configure every unit for the equipment in your Ann Arbor house rather than leaving it on factory defaults that treat a gas furnace like a heat pump.

Ann Arbor houses and what that means for thermostats

Ann Arbor gives us almost every housing type in one zip code. The Old West Side and Old Fourth Ward are full of 1880s–1920s frame houses with stone or rubble foundations, fieldstone basements that stay damp, and furnaces that replaced boilers or gravity units sometime in the 1960s or 70s. Many of those homes still have cast-iron radiators fed by a boiler, and a surprising number have both a boiler and a separate forced-air system added for cooling. Burns Park and Ann Arbor Hills houses are larger 1920s–50s builds with plaster walls, so getting a second return or a bigger supply trunk in is slow work. The ranches and split-levels of the west side were built with 80,000 to 100,000 BTU furnaces that are now oversized for insulated versions of the same house. Condos near Briarwood and Pittsfield Village often have furnaces in closets or attics with tight clearances. Student rentals near campus run the oldest equipment in the city, and landlords routinely call us for emergency service and new-purchase inspections.

Two-stage and variable-speed equipment in Ann Arbor is often running at a fraction of what it can because of the thermostat. The subdivisions in 48103 that were built or re-equipped in the pre-war two-stories and 1950s–60s ranches, with university-era infill on every side got two-stage furnaces and air conditioners, and a lot of them were paired with a basic single-stage thermostat that never calls for high. On a cold Washtenaw County morning the furnace plods along on low for an hour; on a humid July afternoon the air conditioner never ramps up enough to pull moisture out of the house. We wire the second stage, set the staging logic in the thermostat rather than leaving it to the furnace board's timer, and set the dehumidification call so the system runs the way the equipment was designed to in Ann Arbor.

With about 123,000, the largest city in Washtenaw County residents and housing that runs from the pre-war two-stories and 1950s–60s ranches, with university-era infill on every side around Kerrytown to the newer streets near Northside and Lower Town, Ann Arbor keeps us busy year-round. The equipment is on DTE Energy for heat and DTE Energy for cooling, the basements near Michigan Stadium are prone to the same moisture issues as the rest of Washtenaw County, and the ductwork in a lot of these houses was never sized for the air conditioner that was bolted on later. We are 7 miles away, we service every brand, and we quote a flat rate before we start.

Local details we plan around in Ann Arbor

• Fieldstone foundations in the oldest neighborhoods sweat enough that furnace cabinets and water heater bases corrode early unless they sit on blocks or a pad.
• The large number of boiler-and-radiator homes means we see hydronic work here far more than anywhere else in our radius.
• Ann Arbor has its own building department with its own mechanical permit process, and inspectors here want to see combustion air, condensate routing and flue sizing done by the book.
• The Huron River cuts a deep valley through the north side of Ann Arbor, and the Northside, Lower Town and Gallup Park neighborhoods feel it as morning fog, heavier dew and basements that sweat in July. The downtown core holds heat with all its brick and pavement, so attics and upper floors there run several degrees hotter than the leafy blocks of Burns Park and the Old West Side, where mature oaks and maples shade roofs and cut peak cooling loads noticeably.