Furnace Repair in Wilkes-Barre, PA
Furnaces here run from October through May. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Luzerne County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eight months of heat, on nights near 19 degrees
Your furnace runs from October through May here, and on winter nights that average 19°F it does not get much rest. That means more cycles on the igniter and more hours on the blower motor than a furnace in a milder place would ever see. Worn parts tend to fail on the coldest nights, because that is when the furnace is working hardest.
Luzerne County has seen 13 winter storms and 151 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and storms mean power problems. Across Pennsylvania, 15% of households lost power for 24 hours or more in 2024. Most furnaces need electricity to run the blower and controls, even the gas ones, so an outage during a cold snap can leave a house without heat until the power is back.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 19°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 50%
- of homes here heat with gas, so most furnaces here burn gas
- 13 winter storms
- in ten years, the nights a failure hurts most
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A new furnace would cut about $170 a year off heating for a typical Luzerne County home.
Estimates for a typical Luzerne 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 gas or furnace knowledge to get that number, and the state keeps no record of what they know, only that they exist and can be traced if a complaint comes in. Luzerne County can't layer its own HVAC license on top of that, so this registration is the only state-level check that applies here.
For a furnace repair, the part that matters is the gas connection, since that's where a mistake turns dangerous. Registration doesn't touch that work directly, and nothing in Pennsylvania's rule tests a contractor on it. Just over half the homes in Luzerne County heat with gas, so that connection is common work here, but the state's role stops at the business record.
Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly
- Why won't my furnace turn on?
- Start with the thermostat and the power switch. Check that the thermostat is set below room temperature and has fresh batteries if it uses them, and make sure the furnace switch, the one that looks like a light switch near the unit, hasn't been bumped off. If both check out, look at the door panel. Furnaces have a safety switch that keeps the burner from lighting if the panel isn't seated right, so a panel that's loose or off will stop the whole system cold. After a power outage, the furnace should restart on its own once power is back, so if it's still not running after that, a contractor will need to check the ignition system itself.
- Why is my furnace blowing cold air?
- Most often this means the blower is running but the burner hasn't lit. That can come from a dirty flame sensor, a clogged filter starving the burner of air, or an igniter that's failing. It can also just be the blower fan running its normal delay after the burner shuts off, which pushes out cooler air for a short stretch at the end of a heating cycle. If the air stays cold for more than a few minutes, that's not normal operation, and a contractor should look at the ignition and flame sensor before the cold gets worse.
- Why won't my furnace pilot light stay lit?
- This is almost always the thermocouple, the small rod that sits in the pilot flame and tells the gas valve the flame is lit. When it wears out or sits out of position, the valve shuts off the gas as a safety measure, even though the pilot lit just fine a minute earlier. A draft blowing across the pilot or a dirty pilot opening can cause the same thing. A standing pilot doesn't rely on electricity, so this isn't a power problem, and a contractor can usually replace the thermocouple without much trouble.