Furnace Repair in Salt Lake City, UT
Furnaces here run from October through May. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Salt Lake County will get in touch.
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Eight months of heat is a lot to ask of a furnace
From October through May your furnace is the thing standing between your family and a 22°F night. That is eight months of cycling on and off, lighting the burner again and again to keep up. Each start puts wear on the igniter and the flame sensor, the parts most likely to fail after years of that routine.
Most furnaces in Salt Lake County run on gas, so when the power goes out the furnace usually needs it back to fire up again. Utah households saw outages of a day or more often enough in 2024, and this area has logged 91 winter storms and 194 damaging wind events over the past ten years. A furnace that was already struggling to light tends to show it after one of those hits.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 22°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 82%
- of homes here heat with gas, so most furnaces here burn gas
- 91 winter storms
- in ten years, the nights a failure hurts most
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A new furnace would cut about $110 a year off heating for a typical Salt Lake County home.
Estimates for a typical Salt Lake County home, compared with an older unit built to the previous federal minimum, from EIA household energy data, Utah 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.
Utah requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
The Division of Professional Licensing tests and keeps records on the contractor, not on each job. That license follows the business, so it stands behind every furnace repair they take on, not just this one. Utah sets a line at $7,000. Work under that amount does not need a licensed contractor, so a small furnace repair can fall outside that requirement depending on the cost.
For a furnace repair, the license is what stands behind the work here. Utah is a state that tests and tracks the contractor directly. A furnace burns gas, and a loose or bad connection is the dangerous part of that job. Most homes in Salt Lake County heat with gas, so that connection is the thing worth knowing is sound before the work is called done.
Sources: Utah State Legislature · Utah Department of Commerce
- Why won't my furnace turn on?
- Start with the thermostat. If the display is blank or the setting is off, check the batteries before you look at anything else. If the thermostat looks fine, the next thing to check is the switch on or near the furnace itself, it looks like a light switch and it needs to be up. A tripped breaker or a blown fuse will also stop the furnace cold, so check the panel. If power is reaching the furnace and it still won't start, the igniter or the flame sensor may have failed, and that's a job for a contractor to diagnose.
- Why is my furnace blowing cold air?
- Most of the time this means the furnace is running but not firing, so air is moving through the ducts without being heated. Check the thermostat fan setting first. If it's set to "on" instead of "auto", the fan runs all the time, even between heating cycles, and that feels like cold air. If the fan is set to auto and you're still getting cold air, the igniter or the gas valve likely isn't working, and the furnace needs a contractor to look at it. With lows around 22°F here in the winter, this isn't something to leave for long.
- Why won't my furnace pilot light stay lit?
- This usually means the thermocouple has worn out. It's the small sensor that sits in the pilot flame and tells the gas valve the flame is lit. When it fails, the valve shuts off the gas as a safety measure, even though the pilot was burning a moment ago. A draft blowing out the pilot is possible too, but if you're relighting it again and again, the thermocouple is the more likely cause. Either way, this is a repair for a licensed contractor, not something to keep relighting through the winter.