Furnace Repair in Carlisle, PA
Furnaces here run from October through May. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Cumberland County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eight months of heat puts a lot of hours on your furnace
From October through May your furnace is the thing standing between your house and a 24°F night. That is eight months of the burner lighting, running, and shutting off, over and over, month after month. Every one of those cycles puts wear on the igniter and the parts that control the flame.
Carlisle has had 16 winter storms and 89 damaging wind events in the last ten years, and storms like that knock out power. Across Pennsylvania, 15% of households lost power for at least 24 hours in 2024. When the power drops on a cold night, your furnace stops with it, even if nothing inside it is broken. When it comes back, a furnace that was already struggling may not restart on its own.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 24°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 16 winter storms
- in ten years, the nights a failure hurts most
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Pennsylvania requires contractors to register with the state.
Registration puts the business on file with the Bureau of Consumer Protection. It does not mean anyone tested the contractor's furnace work. There is no state license behind the name, only a record that the business exists. Pennsylvania keeps this the same everywhere. Cities and towns cannot add their own HVAC license on top of it, so a registered business in Cumberland County is working under the same rule as one anywhere else in the state.
For a furnace repair, the part that matters most is the gas connection. Registration does not check that work. It only confirms the business is on file, nothing about how the repair itself is done.
Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly
- Why won't my furnace turn on?
- Start with the thermostat. Make sure it is set to heat and set a few degrees above room temperature, and check that its batteries are not dead. If that is fine, check your breaker panel and the furnace's own power switch, which looks like a light switch near the unit. Many furnaces also have a door on the front that has to be seated shut all the way for a safety switch to let the unit run. If none of that brings it back on, the problem is likely in the ignition system or a safety sensor, and a contractor will need to check it.
- Why is my furnace blowing cold air?
- Most often the blower is running but the burners have not lit. Check your air filter first. A filter clogged enough can choke off airflow and trip a safety switch that shuts the burners down while the fan keeps going. If the filter looks fine, the igniter or flame sensor may be failing, which is common enough that it is worth having checked before a night near 24°F turns into a real problem. If you have a heat pump system, cool air for the first minute or so after it starts is normal, since it takes a moment for the air coming off the coil to warm up.
- Why won't my furnace pilot light stay lit?
- A pilot that keeps going out is usually the thermocouple, the small sensor that sits in the pilot flame and tells the gas valve it is safe to stay open. When it wears out or sits out of position, the valve reads no flame and shuts the gas off even though the pilot was lit a minute before. A draft blowing across the pilot or a dirty pilot orifice can also cause it. This is a gas part, so it is worth having a contractor relight it and check it rather than repeating the manual relight yourself over and over.