Most furnace failures come from a short list of parts, and most of those repairs finish on the first visit.
Call (970) 555-0134 if you have no heat. Tell us it is a no-heat call — those go to the front of the line.
What breaks on a furnace
- Hot surface ignitor: Today's furnaces light with a glowing ignitor, not a standing pilot. Ignitors get brittle as they age, and then they crack. The furnace tries to start, fails, and locks out. It is the winter repair we run most.
- Flame sensor: This small rod proves the burners lit. Carbon coats it over time. Then the furnace starts, runs a few seconds, and shuts down — again and again. Cleaning or swapping it takes minutes.
- Blower motor: The blower pushes warm air through the ducts. When it dies, the furnace gets too hot and trips a safety switch. You hear the burners fire, then silence.
- Control board: The board runs the start-up order: ignition, blower timing, and safety checks. Power surges in winter storms are hard on boards, and the signs can look like three other problems at once.
- Cracked heat exchanger: This is the serious one. The heat exchanger wall keeps gas from the burners out of the air you breathe. A crack can let carbon monoxide into your ducts. There is no safe fix for this — we shut the furnace down and talk replacement.
- Frozen or clogged condensate drain: High-efficiency furnaces make water as they run. If the drain line freezes or clogs, the system shuts down to protect itself. It tends to happen on the coldest night of the year.
Signs your furnace needs repair
- No heat, or the house never reaches the thermostat setting
- The furnace starts and stops every few minutes
- Cold air from the vents while the heat is on
- Banging, rattling, squealing, or a delayed-ignition boom at startup
- A yellow, lazy burner flame instead of a steady blue one
- The furnace runs nonstop and the house still feels cold
- Breaker trips or a burning smell when the heat kicks on
- Your carbon monoxide detector alarms — get everyone out, call 911, then call us
Two quick checks before you call. First, the thermostat: set to HEAT, with good batteries. Second, the furnace switch — it looks like a light switch near the unit. Make sure it is on. A bumped switch causes more no-heat calls than you would guess.
Furnace Repair in Loveland homes
Loveland sits at 4,982 feet, and altitude changes furnace math. Gas gear loses power as the air gets thin. The derate in the National Fuel Gas Code runs about 4% for each 1,000 feet above 2,000 feet. That works out to roughly 12% here. A furnace that was just big enough on paper at sea level runs long and struggles in a cold snap. And burners not set up for altitude soot up sensors and ignitors faster.
The homes add their own patterns. The ranches near Lake Loveland and downtown went up in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Plenty still heat with furnaces in their second decade of service or older. The gear is good, but ignitors, boards, and blower motors wear out on schedule. Many of those furnaces sit in cold garages or crawlspaces, where drain lines freeze in the hard cold snaps that pour out of Big Thompson Canyon. Out east, the newer Centerra homes run high-efficiency condensing furnaces. They are solid units — right up until a drain line or pressure switch acts up.
What affects the cost of furnace repair
Most Loveland homeowners pay between $150 and $800 for a furnace repair. The range depends on:
- The part: flame sensors and ignitors are at the low end, control boards in the middle, blower motors toward the top.
- Age and parts: older furnaces may need parts that nobody stocks in town anymore.
- Access: a roomy basement furnace is quicker to service than one wedged into a crawlspace.
- Timing: after-hours emergency work costs more than a scheduled daytime visit.
- What we find: a cracked heat exchanger turns the talk from repair to replacement. We show you the test results before anything else happens.
Related services
When repair stops making financial sense, Furnace Installation covers what replacement involves. A fall HVAC Tune-Up catches most of these failures before the cold does. No heat in the middle of the night? See Emergency HVAC Repair.
Call (970) 555-0134 for furnace repair in Loveland, CO.