Furnace Repair in Bethlehem, PA
Furnaces here run from October through May. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Northampton County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eight months of heat, and nights near 22 degrees
Bethlehem needs a working furnace from October through May, eight months of the year. On the coldest nights, when the temperature outside sits near 22°F, the furnace runs long and often, cycling on and off many times to hold the house steady. That is a lot of starts, and every start puts load on the igniter and the flame sensor. When one of those parts wears out, the burner won't light, and you'll notice it fast because the house cools down quick at that temperature.
Winter storms add another way for things to go wrong. This area has seen 18 winter storms and 172 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and storms like that knock out power. Most furnaces need electricity to run the blower and the control board, even if the heat itself comes from gas, so a power outage means no heat until service is restored.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 22°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 18 winter storms
- in ten years, the nights a failure hurts most
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A new furnace would cut about $150 a year off heating for a typical Northampton County home.
Estimates for a typical Northampton County home, compared with an older unit built to the previous federal minimum, from EIA household energy data, Pennsylvania fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
Repair makes sense when one part has failed and the heat exchanger is sound.
Replacement makes sense when the heat exchanger is cracked or the furnace keeps needing parts.
Pennsylvania requires contractors to register with the state.
That registration puts the business on file with the Bureau of Consumer Protection. Nobody tested the contractor's furnace work to get that number, and no state board is checking the repair itself. It means the business is on record in Pennsylvania, nothing more.
Since Pennsylvania doesn't test or license the trade, and Northampton County can't require its own HVAC license on top of that, the gas connection is the part that matters most on a furnace repair. A loose or bad connection is what makes this job dangerous, not the parts that just wear out. Nothing in Pennsylvania's rule has anyone checking that connection at the state level. In Northampton County, close to four in ten homes heat with gas, so this is the kind of repair a lot of houses here end up needing.
Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly
- Why won't my furnace turn on?
- Start with the thermostat. Check that it's set to heat and the temperature is above room temperature, and check the batteries if it uses them. If the thermostat looks fine, check the breaker for the furnace and the switch that looks like a light switch near the unit, sometimes mounted on the wall or a nearby joist. That switch gets bumped off by accident more often than people expect. If power is reaching the furnace and it still won't start, a contractor will need to check the igniter, the flame sensor, or the control board.
- Why is my furnace blowing cold air?
- The most common reason is the thermostat fan setting is on rather than auto. When it's set to on, the blower runs constantly, even between heating cycles, so you feel room temperature air instead of warm air. Switch it to auto and see if that fixes it. If the fan is already on auto and you're still getting cold air, the furnace may be failing to ignite properly, and a contractor should look at it, since running a furnace that won't ignite risks a gas smell or a bigger repair later.
- Why won't my furnace pilot light stay lit?
- This is usually the thermocouple, a small sensor that sits in the pilot flame and tells the gas valve it's safe to keep supplying gas. When it wears out or gets coated in soot, it can't sense the flame properly and shuts the gas off, even though the pilot lit fine a moment before. A draft blowing across the pilot can also blow it out repeatedly. If relighting it doesn't hold, the thermocouple likely needs to be cleaned or replaced, and that's a job for a licensed contractor since it involves the gas line.