Furnace Repair in Moline, IL
Furnaces here run from October through May. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Rock Island County will get in touch.
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Eight months of heat wears a furnace down fast in Moline
Your furnace works from October through May here, eight months of the year. Winter nights average 18°F, so the burner is firing most of the day and night just to hold the house steady. Most homes in the area heat with gas, which means the igniter and the burner assembly take that cycling hardest, on and off, hundreds of times a week.
Moline has seen 23 winter storms and 87 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and storms like that knock out power. Across Illinois, 16 percent of households lost power for 24 hours or more in 2024 alone. When power drops on a cold night, a gas furnace with a standing pilot will relight on its own, but most modern furnaces need the power back before the blower and ignition system will run again. If your furnace won't start after an outage, or it's cycling more than it used to, that's the wear from a long heating season catching up with it.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 18°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 78%
- of homes here heat with gas, so most furnaces here burn gas
- 23 winter storms
- in ten years, the nights a failure hurts most
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A new furnace would cut about $140 a year off heating for a typical Rock Island County home.
Estimates for a typical Rock Island County home, compared with an older unit built to the previous federal minimum, from EIA household energy data, Illinois 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.
In Illinois, HVAC licensing for homes is left to the cities and towns.
Illinois issues no state license for HVAC work, so whatever rule applies comes from the city or town where the house sits, not from Springfield. Some municipalities in Rock Island County may require their own license for this kind of work and some may not, and there is no state list that says which is which. That leaves the protection resting on whatever the local government there decides, rather than on a credential the state stands behind.
A furnace repair still involves a gas connection, and that connection is the part that has to be right. Illinois sets no state rule for checking that, so whether it gets checked here comes down to whatever the local town requires, not anything filed with the state. With 77.7% of homes in Rock Island County heating with gas, that connection is the part of this job most worth getting right.
Source: Illinois General Assembly
- Why won't my furnace turn on?
- Start with the thermostat and the power. Check that it's set to heat and a few degrees above room temperature, then check the breaker and the switch that looks like a light switch near the furnace, since that shuts it off too. If those are fine, the igniter may have failed or a safety switch has tripped and stopped the furnace before it can start. With winter lows around 18°F here, it's worth having a contractor look at it the same day rather than waiting.
- Why is my furnace blowing cold air?
- Most often the furnace hasn't started burning gas yet even though the blower is running, so you feel cool air first. If that cool air never turns warm, the igniter could be failing to light the burners, or the flame sensor is shutting the burners off right after they start. A dirty filter can also make the air feel cooler than it should by cutting down how much air moves past the heat exchanger. Either way, a furnace running blower-only for more than a few minutes needs a contractor to look at the burners and the igniter.
- Why won't my furnace pilot light stay lit?
- This usually means the thermocouple, the small sensor that tells the gas valve a flame is present, has worn out or is out of position. When it can't sense the pilot flame, the gas valve shuts off the pilot gas as a safety measure, even if the pilot was burning fine a second before. A draft blowing out the pilot is possible too, but if it keeps happening after you relight it, the thermocouple is the more likely cause. A contractor can test and replace it.