The two heating calls we get most often are a furnace that won't fire on a cold morning, and a furnace that's running but barely keeping up. The first is usually an ignition or sensor problem we can fix on the first visit. The second is usually a dirty filter, a failing blower motor, or a furnace past its 15-year mark and losing capacity.
Furnace repair: what fails and when
In most Glen Ellyn and Wheaton homes, residential furnaces are 80% AFUE Goodman, Carrier, or Lennox units installed in the basement or a closet off the mudroom. Common failures by age:
- 5 to 10 years: flame sensor, hot-surface igniter, condensate drain clogs (on 90%+ units).
- 10 to 15 years: inducer motor, blower motor capacitor, thermostat compatibility, gas valve.
- 15+ years: heat exchanger cracks, control board failures, loss of capacity. This is when replacement starts beating repair on long-run cost.
Furnace installation in the west suburbs
For replacements we install Carrier, Lennox, Trane, Goodman, and Rheem furnaces. 80% AFUE for tight budgets and venting constraints. 95%+ AFUE condensing units where it makes sense. We size for the actual home, not the spec on the old unit (which was probably oversized when it was installed in 1998). Pulling the Village of Glen Ellyn permit, scheduling the inspection, and registering the manufacturer warranty are all included. You don't handle paperwork.
Annual furnace cleaning and tune-ups
Two things kill furnaces early. Dirty filters that run too long, and never getting the burners and heat exchanger inspected. We run a fall tune-up every year. Clean the burners, check combustion, verify the inducer pulls proper draft, test the flame sensor, swap the filter, test the safety circuit, and do a CO check at the registers. Takes about an hour. If something is degrading, we'll tell you in October instead of you finding out in January.
In Glen Ellyn proper? Our Glen Ellyn HVAC page covers local repair pricing, village permits, and the neighborhoods we reach fastest.
Combustion safety and CO testing
If you have a gas furnace, you should have working carbon monoxide detectors on every floor. We test combustion on every tune-up because Glen Ellyn's housing stock includes a lot of homes with shared flues, tight retrofits, and questionable past work. If the combustion ratio is off or the heat exchanger has stress cracks, you need to know.