Furnace Repair in West Burke, VT
Furnaces here run from September through May. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Caledonia County will get in touch.
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Nine months of heat, and nights near 9 degrees
Your furnace runs from September through May in West Burke, nine months out of the year. On winter nights averaging 9°F, it cycles on and off for hours at a stretch to hold the house steady. That kind of run time wears on the igniter and the blower motor faster than a milder climate would.
Almost half the homes in this area heat with fuel oil, which means an oil burner and its nozzle doing that work night after night. When a storm knocks out power, and Vermont sees plenty of those, an oil furnace won't restart on its own once the power comes back. If your house is going cold and the thermostat looks fine, the problem is usually in the furnace itself, not what's asking it for heat.
- 9 months
- September through May, your furnace is on duty
- 9°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 38 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 state license or registration behind an HVAC contractor working in Caledonia County. Vermont keeps no list, runs no test, and holds no record on file for this trade. Whatever a contractor knows about furnace repair, they learned it on the job, not from a state exam.
A furnace repair still means gas is involved, and a bad connection there is the dangerous part of the work. Vermont has no state inspector who checks that connection on a repair like this one. The protection on this job comes from the contractor's own training and record, not from a license, because Vermont issues none.
Source: Vermont Department of Public Safety, Division of Fire Safety
- Why won't my furnace turn on?
- Start with the thermostat. Check that it's set to heat and the temperature is above room temperature, and check the batteries if it uses them. If that's fine, check the furnace switch and the breaker, since a tripped breaker or a switch bumped to off will stop it cold. Many furnaces also won't start if the filter is badly clogged or a safety switch has tripped, and at 9°F outside a furnace that won't start needs attention fast. If none of that gets it running, a contractor can find out what's actually wrong.
- Why is my furnace blowing cold air?
- Most often this means the blower is running but the burners haven't lit. That can come from a dirty filter, an igniter that's failing, or a flame sensor that's dirty enough to shut the burners down. It can also just be the blower running through its normal delay after startup or after the burners shut off, which feels cold but isn't a problem. If the air stays cold for more than a few minutes, have a contractor check it, especially with the season here running September through May.
- Why won't my furnace pilot light stay lit?
- A pilot that won't stay lit is usually a sign the thermocouple is worn out or not positioned in the flame correctly. It's a small part that senses the pilot flame and tells the gas valve to stay open, and once it fails the valve shuts the gas off as a safety measure. A draft blowing across the pilot or a dirty pilot orifice can cause the same thing. A standing pilot doesn't rely on power to run, so a power outage isn't the cause here. A contractor can replace the thermocouple or clean the assembly.