HVAC Repair in Norristown, PA
Homes here need heat from October through April and cooling from June through September. If your system quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Montgomery County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eleven months of work a year, hot or cold
Norristown asks for heat from October through April and cooling from June through September. That leaves one month off. The rest of the year your system is running one direction or the other, and the parts inside it wear on that schedule, not a calendar.
Winter nights averaging 25°F mean the burner cycles on and off many times a night to hold the house steady, and each start puts load on the igniter and the ignition control. Summer afternoons near 85°F push the compressor hard for hours at a stretch, and that heat plus the run time is what wears out a capacitor or a contactor before its time. Montgomery County has seen 351 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and a storm that knocks out power partway through a hot afternoon or a cold night is its own kind of stress on a system already working hard.
- 7 months
- October through April, your system heats
- 4 months
- June through September, it cools
- 25°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 85°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A new furnace and air conditioner would cut about $160 a year off heating and cooling for a typical Montgomery County home.
Estimates for a typical Montgomery 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.
Replacement makes sense when the furnace's heat exchanger is cracked, the air conditioner's compressor has failed, or repairs keep coming.
Pennsylvania requires contractors to register with the state.
That registration puts the business on file with the state and nothing more. Nobody tested this contractor's HVAC knowledge to get that number, and no board is tracking complaints or work history behind it. It tells you the business exists and can be traced. It does not tell you they know how to fix a furnace or an air conditioner. Montgomery County cannot require its own HVAC license on top of this, since Pennsylvania does not let cities and towns set that requirement.
So for this repair, the state record begins and ends with that registration. There is no exam behind it and no license to check standing against, here or anywhere else in Pennsylvania.
Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly
- Why is my heat not working?
- Start with the thermostat. Make sure it's set to heat and the temperature is set above room temperature, since a setting bumped a degree or two can look like a dead system. If that's not it, check your breaker panel, because a tripped breaker will cut power to the furnace without any other sign. Gas furnaces also have a pilot or igniter that can fail, so if the blower runs but no heat comes out, that's usually where the problem is. With winter nights here averaging 25°F, a furnace that's stopped working needs attention fast, so if these checks don't get it running, call for repair.
- Why is my system running but not cooling the house?
- Check the air filter first. A filter clogged with dust blocks airflow across the coil, and when that happens the coil can ice over and stop cooling the air even though the system is running. Check the outdoor unit too. If the coil or fan is covered in leaves or debris, the system can't release heat the way it needs to. If the filter is clean and the outdoor unit is clear but the house still isn't cooling, the refrigerant charge or a component inside the system may be the issue, and that's a job for a contractor to diagnose.
- What can I check before calling for HVAC repair?
- Check the thermostat settings, the breaker panel, and the air filter, since these cause a lot of no-heat and no-cool calls. Make sure the thermostat is set to the mode you want and the temperature is where you expect it. Look at the breaker panel for anything tripped, since a reset is sometimes all it takes. Pull the air filter and hold it up to light. If you can't see light through it, replace it, since restricted airflow causes problems for both heating and cooling. If none of this fixes it, a contractor will need to look at the system itself.