Furnace Repair in Bellows Falls, VT
Furnaces here run from September through May. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Windham County will get in touch.
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Nine months of heat, and nights near 14 below zero
Your furnace in Bellows Falls works from September through May. That is nine months of the year it has to start reliably and keep running, and on winter nights averaging 14°F it is not just starting, it is fighting to keep up. That kind of demand wears on the igniter and the blower motor faster than a furnace that gets a few months off.
More than half the homes here heat with fuel oil, and an oil furnace depends on clean nozzles and a steady igniter to fire correctly. When one of those starts to fail, you notice it as short cycling or a burner that struggles to catch. Add in the power outages that come with winter storms, and a furnace that was already due for service can end up not starting back up when the lights come on.
- 9 months
- September through May, your furnace is on duty
- 14°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 70 winter storms
- in ten years, the nights a failure hurts most
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Vermont has no state license for HVAC contractors.
There is no license or registration for this trade in Vermont, so there is no exam a contractor took and no state record to check before someone works on a furnace in Windham County. Nothing routes through the county either. Whoever shows up to do this repair is doing it under no state credential at all.
What that means for a furnace repair is that the credential most people look for is not there to check. A furnace burns gas, and a bad connection or a cracked heat exchanger is the dangerous part of that job, not the paperwork behind the person fixing it. Vermont has no state license standing behind this work, on this job or any other HVAC job in the state.
Source: Vermont Department of Public Safety, Division of Fire Safety
- Why won't my furnace turn on?
- Most often the thermostat isn't calling for heat, the power or gas supply is interrupted, or a safety switch has shut the furnace down. Check that the thermostat is set to heat and the batteries aren't dead. Check the breaker and the furnace's own power switch, which is often mounted on the unit or nearby and looks like a light switch. If the filter is clogged, some furnaces will shut off rather than run with restricted airflow. If none of that brings it back, a contractor can read the fault and find what tripped it.
- Why is my furnace blowing cold air?
- When a furnace runs but the air isn't warm, the burners usually aren't lighting even though the blower is. That can mean a bad igniter, a flame sensor that isn't detecting the flame, or a gas supply problem. It can also mean the furnace is in the middle of its normal cycle, since blowers often run a little before and after the burners fire. If the air stays cold the whole time it runs, the burners aren't lighting and the furnace needs a look before you're back to full heat, especially with winter nights here averaging 14°F.
- Why won't my furnace pilot light stay lit?
- A pilot that won't stay lit is almost always the thermocouple, the small sensor that tells the gas valve the flame is burning. When it wears out or sits out of position, it reads no flame and shuts the gas off even though the pilot was lit a second ago. A draft blowing across the pilot can do the same thing. Relighting it yourself may work for a night, but if it keeps going out, the thermocouple needs replacing, and that's a job for a contractor rather than something to keep repeating on your own.