Houses, and the things that actually go wrong in them
Athens, Watkinsville, Winterville and the streets around them. Breakdowns, replacements, ducts, drains and the summer humidity that makes a badly sized system feel worse than no system at all.
What we check on a gas furnace, and what we will not do
Five things, and one of them is the reason we will occasionally condemn a heater rather than repair it.
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The burners and the flameWhat the flame looks like and how it behaves tells you a great deal before any instrument comes out. Burners get dirty and they can be cleaned.
The heat exchangerThe steel wall between the flue gases and the air you breathe. If that wall is compromised the appliance does not get repaired — it gets shut off and replaced. It is the one thing we will not negotiate about.
The flue and the inducerWhere combustion products leave. Blocked, disconnected or corroded flues are a genuine hazard and they are not always obvious from the room.
The control board and safetiesLimit switches, the pressure switch and the flame sensor exist to stop the appliance in specific conditions. We test them rather than bypass them, always.
The filter and the returnRestricted airflow makes a furnace overheat and cycle on its limit. A surprising share of no-heat calls are solved here.
Pin positions are illustrative and will be adjusted to the final photograph.
02 — Replacements
What happens before we quote a new system
In this order. The equipment is the last decision, not the first.
A load calculation for your houseRoom by room, from orientation, glazing, insulation, shading and how the house is used. Not from the size of the box coming out, which may have been wrong when it was fitted.
Static pressure and airflow measuredAgainst the blower’s own rating. If the ducts cannot carry what the new system produces, that belongs in the quotation rather than in a conversation afterwards.
The ductwork looked at properlyCrawlspace and attic runs, joints, returns and the plenum. Sealing gets priced, or it gets explicitly excluded — never left silent.
Condensate reviewedDrain, trap, slope and float switch. In a Georgia summer this is the part that saves a ceiling.
Permit filedWith the Athens-Clarke County or the relevant county office for your address. Named in the quotation.
Commissioned with numbersAirflow, temperature rise or split, static pressure and charge, written down and left with you.
Why a Georgia summer is hard on an oversized system
Cooling removes moisture only while it runs. A system with more capacity than the house needs hits the thermostat setting quickly, shuts off, and leaves the humidity behind. In a climate this humid that is the difference between comfortable and merely cold.
Turning the thermostat down makes the house cold and sticky instead of warm and sticky, costs more, and puts condensation on grilles.
What we look at first
Whether the equipment is oversized for the real load
Blower speed, and whether it was ever set for this house
Return air sizing, which is very often the restriction
Duct leakage pulling crawlspace or attic air into the return
Where the thermostat is and what it can see
Several of those cost nothing to correct, which is exactly why we measure before proposing equipment.
04 — Rentals
Landlords and student lets
Athens has a great deal of rented housing and it has particular problems: filters that nobody changes between tenancies, thermostats set by people who do not pay the bill, condensate drains that have never been looked at, and a system that has to be reliable in August because nobody will tolerate otherwise.
We will service a portfolio on a schedule and give you a record per property, so a maintenance history exists when a tenant reports a fault. What we will not do is sign off a heat exchanger we are not happy with because a turnover date is close.
