Heating
Forty winters of knowing what a Grand Traverse cold snap does to a furnace
We service, repair and install furnaces, boilers, heat pumps and radiant heating systems, plus unit heaters for the shop or garage, with the precision a northern Michigan winter demands.
Chapter 01
What a cold snap actually does to an undersized furnace
A furnace that is a size too small does not fail all at once. It runs longer to hit the thermostat, then runs longer again the next cold night, and the extra hours show up as wear on the same handful of parts long before the unit is old enough to have earned it. By the time a homeowner notices the house is not quite keeping up, the equipment has usually been working harder than it should for one or two winters already.
That is why the fix is not a bigger furnace by default. It is a real look at the house, because the wrong answer in either direction, oversized or undersized, costs money for years afterward.
Armstrong Air furnace, finished install, with the Comfort Heating service sticker on the cabinet
Boiler or forced air, and what the slab decides
A house with a slab changes the conversation before efficiency ratings do. Forced air needs ductwork run through or under that slab, which is a bigger job once the floor is already poured. A boiler, or radiant tubing set into the slab itself, sidesteps that problem entirely, which is why we install and repair both boilers and radiant floor systems rather than treating forced air as the only option.
We have laid radiant tubing in continuous loops across insulation board on open slabs before the concrete goes down, because that is the one day the loop spacing and return path can still be changed. Once the floor is poured, the design is permanent.
Chapter 03
What we check before we quote a replacement
Three things tell us whether a furnace is worth repairing again or worth replacing: poor efficiency, repairs that keep coming back, and equipment that has reached 10 to 15 years of age. One of those on its own is usually just a repair. Two or three together is where we will say so plainly rather than patch it again.
A replacement quote also starts with a load calculation, not with matching the tonnage of whatever is being torn out. Square footage, insulation quality and window specifications all factor in, because sizing off the old sticker just repeats whatever mistake was made the first time.
Unit heaters for the shop or garage
A garage or shop is not a house, and it does not need to be heated like one. We install unit heaters, mounted overhead where they are out of the way of the work happening underneath, sized for the space rather than borrowed from a residential job.
We are also honest about what heat pumps are good for here. One customer had an air to air heat pump installed and wrote that Levi and Corey walked her through the new thermostat afterward so she understood how the equipment actually worked, which is the standard we hold every install to, heat pump or otherwise.
Free quotes, and emergency service when a furnace will not wait until Monday. Call (231) 888-0293.