Furnace Repair in Menlo Park, CA
If you have no heat in Menlo Park, the honest first answer is that most no heat calls come down to one of about five parts on the ignition side of the furnace, and those are the cheap ones. What I open most in this city is the gas furnace, so this is the machine I spend the most time inside here.
A furnace here fools people about its age. It works four or five months a year, gently, so a twenty year old unit can look and sound better than it has any right to. Igniters, flame sensors, rubber tubing and motor bearings age on the calendar whether the burner lights much or not.
I am John Towner. I own Silicon Valley Comfort, I do the work myself, and I answer my own phone at 408-691-5940.
Why furnace repair in Menlo Park is its own job
The useful thing in my Menlo Park records is not the furnace. It is what is sitting on top of it.
The indoor coil is on that short list of equipment right alongside the furnace, and in a split system with gas heat it lives in the supply plenum directly above the furnace cabinet. Two things follow, and both matter in January. The air the furnace moves in winter goes through a cooling coil it does not need, so that coil is a restriction the heating side pays for all season, and a dirty one is a heating complaint as much as a cooling one. And a furnace job here is usually done underneath a cased coil, in a space sized for the equipment rather than for the person working on it.
There is a second thing worth reading in the names. Carrier builds furnaces. ADP does not, it builds coils. Both names are in this file, which tells me the coil above the furnace and the furnace itself were not always bought at the same time. Different vintages, and a cased coil sized against the cabinet it was ordered for rather than the one it ended up on. I check the width and the transition between the two before I blame the burner for an airflow complaint.
The install years here run 2006 to 2021. Anything inside that window is an induced draft furnace with hot surface ignition and a control board rather than a standing pilot dinosaur, and that is the age range where a failure is one identifiable part and the part is still on a shelf. Five jobs is a short list, not a picture of the whole town, but that window is wide enough to be worth something.
What actually fails on a Menlo Park furnace
Three failures cover most of the no heat calls I take, and a fourth turns up on newer equipment.
A dirty flame sensor. It is a thin metal rod sitting in the burner flame with one job, proving to the control board that the burner actually lit. It builds a film over a few seasons, the microamp signal drops below what the board will accept, and the furnace lights, runs a few seconds, shuts down, tries again three times and locks out. It is the single most common no heat call I take.
A cracked hot surface igniter. It is a brittle ceramic element that goes glowing hot and then cold again several times a day all winter. Thermal cycling kills it, not run hours, and a furnace short cycling for some other reason puts far more cycles on it than the running time suggests. What you hear is a furnace that hums and clicks and never lights.
A limit switch tripping on high temperature. The burner makes heat faster than the air moving past it can carry away, the plenum climbs past the limit setting, and the burner shuts off with the blower still running. You feel warm air, then cool air, then nothing, over and over. Everybody blames the furnace, but it is doing what it was built to do, which is refuse to cook itself. The real question is what is holding the air back, and since the indoor coil turns up all over my Menlo Park list and sits right above the furnace, that is the first restriction I look at after the filter.
On a newer high efficiency furnace the fourth one is a blocked condensate trap. Those furnaces make water as they run, and if the drain plugs a pressure switch will not close and the burner never fires.
Crawlspaces Near The Creek
Parts of Menlo Park sit close to San Francisquito Creek, and homes there have dealt with high water before. Furnaces in crawlspaces and on low garage floors are the first thing to take on water in a bad storm. A furnace that has been wet needs to be inspected before it runs again. Water in the gas valve, the control board, or the inducer motor does its damage the moment power comes back on.
Furnace repair in Menlo Park near the creek often includes a look at how high the furnace sits and whether rust has started on the cabinet, burners, or flue connector. Raising equipment off a damp floor is a small job compared to replacing a flooded furnace.
Older Furnaces In Older Homes
The Willows, Allied Arts, and the older streets near downtown have plenty of furnaces that are twenty or thirty years old. The heat exchanger is the part to worry about as a furnace ages. Years of running hot from restricted airflow can crack it, which can let combustion gases into the air you breathe or cause flame rollout. Every furnace call includes a heat exchanger inspection, a look at the venting, gas pressure at the manifold, and a combustion test.
When The Addition Runs Cold
Second story additions and family room remodels often get tied into the original furnace and ducts. The new rooms run cold because the duct runs are too long or too small, not always because the furnace is too small. Measuring static pressure and the temperature at each register shows where the heat is going. Often the fix is in the ducts, at a fraction of the cost of a bigger furnace.
Before You Call
Check the filter, the furnace switch, and the breaker. If the furnace lights and shuts off after a few seconds, note any blinking codes on the control board, because a dirty flame sensor is a common and quick fix. Keep working carbon monoxide alarms on every level and near the bedrooms in any home with gas appliances. If one sounds, get everyone outside and call from there. A yearly furnace check in the fall, with the readings recorded, is the simplest way to catch a weak igniter or a dirty sensor before the first cold night.
When you book, mention whether the furnace sits in a crawlspace, a garage, or a closet, and whether the house is near the creek. If the furnace ever took on water in a storm, say so, even if it seemed to run fine afterward. Water damage to a gas valve or control board does not always show up right away, and it changes what we check first.
How I diagnose it
The rating plate first, because every number I take after that gets compared against a number the manufacturer printed on it.
Flame sensor microamps. A meter in series with the sensor reads the current the flame is conducting. There is a threshold the board needs to see, and the difference between clean and marginal is a measurement rather than an opinion.
Gas manifold pressure against the rating plate. If it is off, the burner is either underfiring, which feels like a furnace that cannot keep up, or overfiring, which cooks the heat exchanger. Neither is visible by looking at the flame.
Temperature rise across the heat exchanger against the range printed on the plate. Supply minus return has to land inside that range, and this is the reading that catches an airflow problem before it turns into a limit trip.
Static pressure across the furnace, to sort out whether the restriction is the filter, the cooling coil above the furnace, the return or the supply side. Those are four different repairs.
Inducer and blower amp draw, which is how a motor tells you it is going before it goes.
And I look at the heat exchanger. If it is cracked I will tell you plainly, shut the furnace down, and not talk you into running it one more winter.
Repair or replace
Repair, in most Menlo Park houses, and the reason is the 2006 floor.
Nothing on my list for this city was installed before 2006, which puts even the oldest furnace I am likely to meet here inside the era where a control board, an inducer, a pressure switch, a flame sensor or a blower motor is a catalogue part rather than a hunt. Parts availability usually decides whether an old machine is worth keeping, and on this list it is not the problem. Age on its own is not a reason to replace a furnace here. It is a reason to expect the ignition parts to be near the end of their run, which is a much cheaper sentence.
One thing ends the conversation and that is the heat exchanger. A crack in it is not a repair. That is a replacement and it is not a negotiation, because the crack sits between the combustion side and the air your family breathes. I will shut the furnace down and say it to your face rather than sell you one more winter out of it.
The other thing that ends it is arithmetic. When the control board, the inducer and the blower motor all want replacing in the same season on a furnace past twenty, you are rebuilding it piece by piece for more than the whole is worth, and I would rather stop you than take the work.
One more thing, and it is not in my interest to raise it. If you are thinking about a heat pump in the next few years, the furnace is not really the decision you are making.
Menlo Park neighborhoods I cover
A furnace call is shaped less by the street than by where the machine ended up, so this is worth sorting out before I drive over.
In the postwar ranch houses the furnace is in a hall closet behind a louvered door or standing in the garage, with the cooling coil in the plenum directly above it. Closet installs are tight and everything comes out through one doorway, so I need the floor in front of that door clear and a light in there I can see by.
Near downtown the houses are pre war, and a pre war house did not come with central heat in it. Whatever is in there now was added decades later and put wherever it would fit, so I do not guess from the address. Tell me whether yours is in a closet, a garage, a basement or behind a knee wall.
One Menlo Park case is worth naming because people assume it is bigger than it is. This town has two small Eichler tracts, Stanford Gardens and Oakdell Park, roughly thirty five houses between them. Flat roof, no attic over it, slab underneath, and not what I usually find here. If you are in one of those two, say so.
In the newer construction it is usually a proper mechanical space with a condensate line and a sealed sidewall vent, and there the drain rather than the furnace tends to be the problem.
Straight Pricing, No Surprises
Residential Diagnostic
$99
Standard hours. After 6:00 PM, Saturdays, and holidays: $149. The standard diagnostic is credited toward your repair if you approve the work on the same visit.
Commercial Diagnostic
$199
Business hours. After-hours: $299. Light commercial, retail, and multi-family equipment.
Repairs and Installations
Quoted before we touch a wrench. Supplier invoice attached to your job sheet.
Furnace Repair Menlo Park: common questions
I have no heat at all. What can I check myself first?
Four things, in this order. The breaker. The thermostat, batteries included, because a dying battery announces itself on the first genuinely cold night. The switch on the wall beside the furnace that looks like a light switch, which gets flipped off by anybody storing boxes. And the door panel, because a safety switch behind it will not let the burner light unless the panel is seated.
It smells like burning the first time it runs each year. Is that dangerous?
Usually not. Dust settles on the heat exchanger over eight idle months and burns off in the first few cycles. It should fade within an hour or two and not come back later in the season. What is not normal is a sharp chemical or electrical smell, any smell of gas, or a burning smell weeks into winter. Shut it off and call.
The furnace runs a few minutes, quits, then starts again. What is that?
Usually a limit switch tripping on high temperature, and the cause is nearly always air rather than the furnace. The plenum climbs past the limit setting and the burner shuts down while the blower keeps running. Change the filter first. If it keeps happening, temperature rise and static pressure say whether the restriction is the filter, the coil above the furnace, or the duct.
My furnace is around twenty years old. Should I replace it now?
Not on age alone. Nothing on my list for this city was installed before 2006, so the parts for anything I am likely to find here are still catalogue items, and I would put a board or a motor in one without hesitating. The item that ends it is the heat exchanger. If that is cracked there is nothing to debate.
Should I put in a heat pump instead of another furnace?
Maybe, and the honest version is that the decision is not really about the furnace. A heat pump delivers heat at ninety something degrees where your furnace delivers well above a hundred and twenty, so it moves a good deal more air for the same work. Whether your duct can is a static pressure reading. Take it before you shop.
The coil above my furnace is a different brand than the furnace. Does that matter for a heating repair?
It matters for one thing, which is airflow. Two names show up in my Menlo Park records and one of them builds coils rather than furnaces, so a mismatched pair is normal here. It does not affect how the burner runs. It does affect whether that cased coil is the right width for the furnace cabinet and whether the transition is choking the supply, which is worth a look on any furnace that keeps tripping its limit.