Freeze warning week in Columbia County is furnace week at Cook's

Freeze warning week

Lake City sees its first 32-degree night somewhere between late November and mid-December most years, with several more freezes before March and the occasional plunge into the 20s. The National Weather Service posts the freeze warning, Columbia County residents cover their plants, and that evening our phone starts ringing with furnaces that haven’t fired since the spring. Some have a dead igniter. Some have a flame sensor coated in a season’s worth of film. A few have a problem that means the furnace should stay off until someone looks at it.

This page is for the night the warning posts. Run the check. Know the three findings that end the check. Then here’s how the visit goes once the truck pulls in.

Six checks at the furnace before dialing

If the furnace tries to light, runs a few seconds and shuts down, repeatedly, stop retrying after three attempts. Each try dumps a little gas, and the control will lock out anyway.

The three findings that mean leave it alone

1. You smell gas. Rotten eggs, sulfur. Don’t flip switches. Leave the house, call the gas utility from outside, then call us. Inside the city that’s Lake City Utilities; in the county it’s your propane supplier.
2. A carbon monoxide alarm sounds, or anyone has an unexplained headache and nausea while the furnace runs. Shut the furnace off, open windows, get out, call. A cracked heat exchanger is a safety stop, not a repair.
3. The burner flame is yellow or orange and lazy instead of steady blue, or there’s soot around the burner compartment. The furnace is burning dirty. Off, and call.

Everything else on the list is a repair call, and it can wait a few hours if it has to.

Call Cook's for furnace repair

What a furnace visit looks like

Cook’s works on gas furnaces on the Lake City Utilities natural gas system inside the city, propane furnaces in the county, and electric furnaces everywhere. The order of operations is fixed because safety comes before comfort.

Safety first. Gas pressure at the valve, a leak check at every joint we can reach, and a combustion analysis at the flue. Then the heat exchanger: a visual with a scope where possible, and a carbon monoxide reading in the supply air. If the exchanger is compromised, the visit becomes a replacement conversation and the furnace stays off.

Then the ignition chain. Hot-surface igniter resistance, flame sensor cleaned and tested, pressure switch and its tubing, inducer motor draw, the roll-out and high-limit switches. Nine out of ten “won’t stay lit” furnaces are fixed in this step.

Then airflow. Filter, blower wheel, blower motor amps, and the duct. A 1950s frame house near the Columbia County Courthouse with a furnace in a closet and a single return is often running hot and tripping its limit, and no part replacement fixes a return that’s too small.

Then controls. Thermostat, control board, transformer, and the wiring between. Summer lightning on the FPL line damages furnace boards too; they just don’t show it until December.

Then the price, before the part. Same price at 2 a.m. as at 2 p.m., with no after-hours charge. If a specific board or inducer has to be ordered, you’ll know the lead time, and if the house is cold we’ll get temporary heat going where we can.

After the furnace is lit again

Carbon monoxide detectors. One on each floor and near sleeping areas, with fresh batteries. The 1950s-to-80s block ranches around town often have none. We’ll tell you if yours are missing or expired.

The filter schedule. Monthly in winter if the house is dusty or has pets, otherwise every two to three months. Write the date on the frame.

What’s next-oldest. A furnace past fifteen that just had its igniter replaced probably has a flame sensor and an inducer motor of the same age. We’ll point out what we saw so the next cold night doesn’t surprise you.

The condensate question. High-efficiency furnaces make acidic water that drains like an air conditioner does. On a private well in the county, the drain scales. A cleanout and a maintenance visit each fall keep it clear.

Propane. If the tank ran low, set up a keep-full schedule with your supplier before the next front.

Gas, propane and electric: the three furnaces in Lake City

The in-city neighborhoods with gas service, the historic blocks around Lake DeSoto and much of the older ranch housing, run natural gas furnaces, many now twenty years old or more. Half-acre subdivisions like Mayfair and homes across the rural county run propane from a tank in the yard, with the same furnace designs and the same failure points, plus an orifice and regulator sized for propane. Electric furnaces, in Watertown’s mill-era housing and a lot of manufactured homes, fail differently: elements, sequencers, limits and relays, none of which involve combustion but all of which can leave a house cold.

Cook’s repairs all three, whatever the badge on the cabinet says: Trane, Lennox, Bryant, Carrier or something less familiar. The Lake City route starts at the Palm Coast shop, so when you call 866-266-5709 the dispatcher will give you an arrival window that accounts for the drive rather than one that sounds good [[CONFIRM WITH JERRY]].