FAQ
Heating and Cooling Questions, Answered in Plain Numbers
Most of these arrived by phone before they arrived on this page. Derek's answers, in Derek's way: the system explained as readings and ranges, no question treated as a sales opening. If yours is not here, call Call for same-day help and ask Eddie, or send it with the estimate form. Answering is free, like the estimate: free, hassle-free, and no-obligation.
The furnace runs, but the house never warms up. Why?
Because making heat and delivering heat are two different jobs, and your system is doing one of them. Work the list in the order the readings would. A filter loaded enough to strangle airflow can cut delivered heat to a fraction of what the furnace makes, and it is the first check because it costs almost nothing to rule out. A burner or sensor problem can let the flame light, prove out, and drop early, over and over, so the furnace works all day at a third of its strength. And the ductwork can be delivering your heat to a crawlspace, an attic, or a garage ceiling through a run that has come apart. The temperature rise across the furnace and a walk through the rooms with a thermometer separate those three stories in one visit.
There is ice on my air conditioner. Should I just let it run?
No. Ice is the system telling you the coil has dropped below freezing and is storing your indoor humidity as frost. Two roads lead there: air is not moving across the coil the way it should (a loaded filter, a weakening blower, a matted coil), or the refrigerant charge is low, which usually means a leak somewhere. Running it frozen cools nothing, strains the compressor, and stores up a meltwater event when the ice lets go. Switch the cooling off, leave the fan on if your thermostat offers it, let it thaw fully, and check the filter while you wait. Then call. What matters for the diagnosis is when the ice formed and whether the airflow ever felt strong.
My thermostat screen is blank. Is the whole system dead?
Rarely. The thermostat is the smallest, cheapest witness in the system, and its silence usually reports a power problem upstream of it, not a death in the family. Start simple: batteries, if your model takes them. Then the furnace power switch, which looks like a light switch on or near the unit and gets bumped during storage runs more often than anyone admits. Then the breaker. Behind those sits the real possibility: a safety switch in the furnace has cut power on purpose, often because a condensate drain backed up or a limit tripped, and in that case the blank screen is the message, not the problem. If the simple three are fine, call, and tell us the screen is dark. It shortens the visit.
What does furnace repair typically cost around Columbus?
Budget by ranges, and let the readings set your number. Around Columbus, most furnace repairs land between $150 and $700. The common ignition-side jobs, an ignitor or flame sensor, typically run $150 to $400. A thermostat typically runs $150 to $450, a control board $200 to $600, and a blower motor $450 to $1,200, because blower motors range from simple single-speed units to variable-speed motors in newer high-end furnaces. A full furnace replacement, installed, typically runs $4,500 to $8,500. The full table, with cooling figures beside it, sits on the heating repair page.
My system turns on and off every few minutes. What is that?
Short cycling, and it is a symptom with a list behind it, not a diagnosis. On the heating side: a filter choking airflow until a safety limit trips, a thermostat fooled by sun or a nearby supply vent, or a furnace oversized for the house, heating its own small world and satisfying itself. On the cooling side: a failing capacitor, a charge off its mark, or a condensate safety switch interrupting the run. What unites the list is wear. Every start is the hardest moment in a motor's day, and a system starting forty times an hour is aging in fast motion. It is worth a visit in the week you notice it, not the month it stops entirely.
We have a heat pump. Why does it run all day in January?
Because moving heat is slow work in deep cold, and January in Columbus is deep cold: average highs in the upper 30s, lows in the low 20s, and a few nights most winters near or below zero. A heat pump pulls heat out of outdoor air, and as that air gets colder there is less to pull, so the system runs longer and leans on its backup heat to hold the line. Long run times and backup heat cycling on are the design working as designed. The behavior that earns a call is different: outdoor ice that builds and never clears during defrost, the house losing temperature hour by hour, or backup heat carrying the house alone for days, which shows up on the electric bill before it shows up anywhere else.
Do you cover my town?
The map is the Columbus metro: Columbus itself is home base, and the vans run Dublin, Westerville, Worthington, Hilliard, Grove City, Reynoldsburg, Pickerington, Gahanna, Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights, Whitehall, Canal Winchester, Pataskala, Groveport, and Obetz, with Delaware, Powell, Marysville, Lancaster, and Newark at the outer edge. If you are just outside those lines but inside the metro's gravity, call and ask. The map has edges, and Eddie can tell you in one phone call which side of them your house is on.
The system is old. How do I think about repair versus replace?
With three numbers, which any company should be willing to put in front of you. The age of the system, because parts support and efficiency both fall off a cliff somewhere past fifteen years for most equipment. The size of the repair against the size of a replacement: a $300 ignitor on a twelve-year-old furnace is an easy repair; a $1,800 refrigerant-side repair on a twenty-year-old air conditioner deserves the other conversation. And the system's recent history, because a unit repaired three times in two seasons is telling you its trajectory in plain language. Judge each number by the readings behind it, and take the evening to decide if you want it. A system decision made at the kitchen table beats one made standing in a cold living room.
Still stuck, literally or otherwise? Call for same-day help or start with the free estimate.