Whiting cold comes off the lake
Whiting sits right on Lake Michigan, and in January you feel it. The wind comes straight off the water, and a furnace that quits at night leaves a small house cold by breakfast. We’re a short drive from Munster, and a real person answers the phone at any hour.
Tell us what’s happening. We walk you through a few safe checks while you’re on the phone, tell you the diagnostic fee, and send a tech if you still need one.
Quick checks before we come
- Make sure the thermostat is set to heat and a few degrees above room temperature.
- Check the filter. A clogged one can shut a furnace down.
- Find the switch near the furnace. It looks like a regular light switch and sometimes gets flipped off by accident.
- Check the breaker for the furnace.
- Look through the small window on the furnace door for a blinking light, and note the pattern.
If none of that brings the heat back, don’t keep resetting it. Call us. Our page on heat going out at night has the full list.
When the control board is the problem
The control board is the furnace’s brain. It runs the start-up sequence, reads the safety switches, and turns the blower on and off. When a relay on the board burns out, you can get odd behavior: a blower that won’t stop, a furnace that won’t start, or a blinking code that doesn’t match anything obvious. Boards fail less often than igniters or flame sensors, so we rule out the cheap things first. We don’t swap a board on a hunch. A board can also fail because something else stressed it, like a shorted wire from a failing blower motor or a power surge. When we replace one, we look for the reason it failed so the new board doesn’t go the same way.
Night calls, weekend calls
Furnaces don’t pick convenient times to quit. Plenty of Whiting calls come in after dark, on a Saturday, or on a holiday with the family over. A real person picks up every time. We tell you honestly whether it’s reasonable to wait until morning with a space heater and extra blankets, or whether we should come out now. If there’s an infant, an older parent or someone sick in the house, we treat it as urgent.
Homes in Whiting
Whiting is small and close-knit, and most of its homes are older frame and brick houses on narrow lots, many with basement furnaces. Some have ductwork that’s been changed over the years as rooms were finished or added. Close-set houses with lake wind hitting them all winter work their furnaces hard, and it shows up first as rooms that never quite warm up. Tight basements with the washer and dryer next to the furnace also collect lint, and lint on a filter or burner adds up over a winter.
Your price, on paper
After the tech finds the problem, you get a written flat-rate price. You approve it before any work starts, and the bill matches. Anything that affects the price, like an after-hours visit, gets mentioned on the phone before the tech drives over. If you’d rather not do the repair, you pay the diagnostic fee and that’s all.
We fix what’s broken
Our techs aren’t on commission. A bad board in a sound furnace gets a new board. If the furnace has a bigger problem and a repair isn’t worth it, we say so and show you the repair and replacement prices side by side. Age by itself isn’t a diagnosis.
If it’s gas or carbon monoxide
Smell gas? Leave the house and call NIPSCO or 911 from outside. Carbon monoxide alarm going off? Get out and call 911. Don’t go back in to check on the furnace.
Heat out in Whiting? Call (219) 555-0142. We also cover nearby Hammond and East Chicago, and you can read how every visit works on our furnace repair page.
