A residential gas furnace in a basement, with PVC intake and exhaust and a supply plenum feeding ductwork

Red Seal certified Service on any make Qualicum Beach shop

Furnace repair across Oceanside and the Central Island

The furnace quit and you want to know whether that is a part or the end of the furnace.

When the heat quits

A furnace fault is a diagnosis before it is a repair, and the diagnosis starts on the phone.

Tell us the make, the model and what the furnace is doing, and you will usually get a sense of the likely fault before anyone drives out. Some of it you can rule out yourself in two minutes, and we would rather you did.

What we will not do is quote a repair sight unseen, or tell you over the phone that a furnace is finished. Those answers come from readings taken at the unit: temperature rise across the heat exchanger, current draw on the blower, gas pressure where it applies, and what the control board is reporting.

If the furnace is old enough that the conversation is really about replacing it, we will say so plainly and point you at the repair-or-replace arithmetic rather than a brochure.

Have this ready when you call

The make, model and serial number from the label inside the door
What it is doing, and what it did just before it stopped
When it last had a service, and who did it
Your last service invoice, if you still have it

Call the shop with the make, the model and what the furnace is doing. If it is still running and can wait, send the same details through the contact form instead.

Call 250-797-2829 Use the contact form

What usually goes wrong

Four symptoms cover most winter call-outs. None of them mean the same thing on every furnace, which is the point.

It runs, the house stays cold Most often airflow: a filter nobody has changed, a blocked return, a blower wheel packed with dust. It presents as a heating fault and it is usually a breathing fault.

It lights, then shuts down Short cycling. A dirty flame sensor, a restricted flue, a limit switch cutting out on overheat. Left alone, this is how a heat exchanger cracks.

The blower will not stop Usually a fan limit switch that has stuck closed, or a thermostat set to continuous fan by somebody who forgot. Cheap to fix, easy to misdiagnose.

Nothing at all Check the breaker, the thermostat batteries and the switch on the side of the furnace before you call anyone. If all three are fine, it needs a technician.

If you smell gas, stop reading

Leave the house, take everyone with you, and call your gas utility's emergency line from outside. Do not switch anything on or off on the way out. That is a gas emergency, not a service call, and it does not wait for us.

A hydronic manifold with flow meters, a circulator pump and pressure gauges on a plant room wall

Is it worth fixing?

Three things decide it: what the repair costs against the age of the furnace, whether the parts still exist, and what the rest of the system looks like. A twelve-year-old furnace with a failed igniter is a repair. The same furnace with a cracked heat exchanger is not.

Efficiency belongs in the arithmetic too, but only honestly. A newer furnace burns less fuel; it does not pay for itself on a schedule anyone can promise you, and we will not pretend otherwise.

Nothing on our invoice changes if you keep the furnace you have. We would rather fix it and tell you roughly how much life is left than sell you a replacement you did not need this year.

Repair or replace How we quote

Thinking about a heat pump instead?

Then the first question is not which heat pump. It is what the house is heated with today, because that decides what the rebates will do for you.

Heated by electric baseboards now

This is the household the provincial Home Renovation Rebate is built for. That rebate and the others on this row need the heat pump installed by a contractor registered with CleanBC Better Homes. Griffin Refrigeration is not registered, so none of them is available on a heat pump we install today.

What an electrically heated home gets

Heated by gas, propane or oil now

On the Island there is no provincial heat pump rebate for a fossil-fuel household unless it is income qualified. The fossil-to-heat-pump amount you see quoted is for homes at and north of 100 Mile House.

Which rebate actually applies

Inside an RDN Electoral Area

The Regional District of Nanaimo pays $2,000 for a switch off gas, oil or propane in its Electoral Areas, which include Nanoose Bay, Coombs, Errington, Bowser and French Creek. Not Parksville, not Qualicum Beach, none of the Alberni-Clayoquot towns such as Port Alberni, Tofino and Ucluelet, and not for replacing heating equipment that has already failed.

How the RDN rebate works

CleanBC Better Homes and Regional District of Nanaimo program pages. Amounts and windows move, so the linked pages carry the current figure.

Most winter breakdowns were visible in October

A furnace that gets looked at before the heating season starts is a furnace that mostly does not call anyone out in January. Filters, flame sensor, blower, flue, and the readings written down so next year has something to compare against.

HVAC maintenance

Where we take furnace calls

Oceanside first, then down Highway 19 to Nanaimo and up Highway 4 into the Alberni Valley.

Parksville The next town over, on the same call-out as the shop.
Qualicum Beach The shop is here, so this is the shortest drive we make.
Nanaimo Down Highway 19 from the shop. Heat pumps and furnace work for homes.
Port Alberni Piped natural gas runs here the way it does at home, so a gas furnace is the usual thing to find in a Valley basement. Ignition, flame sensor, blower and heat exchanger, the same work as any call.

Also covered Nanoose Bay French Creek Coombs Errington Bowser Qualicum Bay Deep Bay Lantzville Ladysmith Chemainus Duncan Courtenay Comox Cumberland Campbell River and across Central Vancouver Island, from Campbell River to Duncan

Furnace questions we get

What is the most common problem with a furnace?

Airflow, by a distance. A filter left in past its life, a return blocked by furniture or storage, a blower wheel loaded with dust. After that it is ignition: a flame sensor gone dirty, or an igniter at the end of its run. Both are small parts, and both look like a dead furnace from the hallway.

What does a furnace repair cost?

It depends on the part and the make, so we do not publish an average that would be wrong for your furnace. You get the price for the repair in front of you before the work goes ahead, and if the sensible answer is to stop and talk about replacement instead, you hear that too.

What is the $5,000 rule for repairing a furnace?

A rule of thumb people bring to the conversation: multiply the age of the furnace in years by the cost of the repair, and if the total clears $5,000 they treat replacing it as the better buy. It is a starting point rather than an answer, because it ignores efficiency, parts availability and what the house is heated with. Our repair-or-replace guide works through it properly.

Will you work on a furnace another company installed?

Yes. Send the make, model and serial number off the label inside the door, and what your last service invoice says, through the contact form, or call the shop on 250-797-2829. You will hear what we see before anything is booked.

Call about the furnace

Tell us the make, the model and what it is doing. You will hear what we think before anyone books a visit.

Call 250-797-2829 Book a furnace repair