Furnace repair, replacement and tune-ups in Nepean

Bells Corners and Crystal Beach are the oldest parts of Nepean, built in the 1960s with bungalows and side-splits along streets that back onto the Greenbelt and the river. Craig Henry and the Merivale corridor filled in through the 1970s, and Centrepointe came in the 1980s and 1990s with larger two-storeys. Across all of them the first furnace is long gone and the second one, typically an 80 percent mid-efficiency unit installed in the 1990s, is the one that is failing now.

The complaint we hear most in Nepean is not no heat but the wrong heat: the family room over the garage is cold, the upstairs is stuffy, the basement is freezing. In a side-split that is usually an airflow problem, a blower running on a low tap, a damper closed years ago, a return that was never cut into the lower level. We measure airflow at the registers and balance the ducts before anyone talks about a bigger furnace, because a bigger furnace makes a balancing problem worse.

When the mid-efficiency unit does go, a 96 percent two-stage furnace sized to the house is the usual answer, and the low stage runs long enough to pull the whole side-split up to temperature evenly. Nepean is on Enbridge natural gas, is inside the same scheduling window as central Ottawa, and borders Barrhaven to the south, so a technician is rarely far away.

• Bells Corners and Crystal Beach: 1960s bungalows and side-splits, original ducts, second furnace due
• Craig Henry and Merivale: 1970s homes, uneven heat between levels, balancing
• Centrepointe: 1980s and 1990s two-storeys, mid-efficiency furnaces at end of life