Furnace Repair in Quincy, IL
Furnaces here run from October through April. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Adams County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Seven months of winter work adds up on a Quincy furnace
From October through April your furnace is the thing standing between you and a 22 degree night. That's seven months of the burner lighting, running, and shutting off, over and over, every single day it's cold. Each cycle puts a little more wear on the igniter and the parts that control the flame.
Quincy has had 11 winter storms and 48 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and storms like that knock out power. When the power comes back, most furnaces restart on their own, but if yours doesn't fire back up, or the flame won't hold, that's worth a look before the next cold snap.
- 7 months
- October through April, your furnace is on duty
- 22°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 59%
- of homes here heat with gas, so most furnaces here burn gas
- 11 winter storms
- in ten years, the nights a failure hurts most
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A new furnace would cut about $120 a year off heating for a typical Adams County home.
Estimates for a typical Adams 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.
Adams County does not run its own HVAC license, and Illinois does not either, so whatever rule applies to a furnace repair here comes from the town the house sits in, if that town has one at all. Some towns issue their own license and test for it, some just keep a list of registered contractors, and some have nothing on the books. There is no statewide record to check against, only whatever the local building office keeps.
For a furnace repair, the part that matters most is the gas connection, since a bad one is what makes the job dangerous rather than just inconvenient. Whether that connection gets checked by anyone depends on the town, and in a place with no rule on the books, nothing requires that check at all. In Adams County, 58.8% of homes heat with gas, so this is a repair a lot of households in the county will need at some point.
Source: Illinois General Assembly
- Why won't my furnace turn on?
- Most often the thermostat isn't calling for heat the way you think it is, or power to the furnace has been cut off somewhere. Check that the thermostat is set below room temperature and has fresh batteries if it uses them. Then check the furnace switch, which looks like a light switch near the unit, and the breaker for it. If those are fine, the igniter or a safety switch inside the furnace may be at fault, and that's a job for a contractor to test.
- Why is my furnace blowing cold air?
- If air is moving but it's not warm, the furnace may be running its fan without the burners lighting. That points to an ignition problem, a gas supply issue, or a safety switch that's shutting the burners off before they can heat the air. A dirty filter can also make a furnace struggle to keep up, so check that first. If the filter's clean and you're still getting cold air, have a contractor look at the ignition system.
- Why won't my furnace pilot light stay lit?
- This usually means the thermocouple, the small sensor that tells the gas valve the flame is lit, is worn out or dirty. When it can't sense the flame, it shuts the gas off as a safety measure even though the pilot was burning fine a moment before. A draft blowing out the pilot is another common cause, so check for any air movement near it. If relighting it keeps failing, the thermocouple likely needs to be replaced, and that's not something to try yourself with gas involved.