A furnace needs air as much as it needs gas
Union Crest works on heating, cooling and ventilation across Cheektowaga and the Buffalo suburbs. The thing we find most often, in houses and in premises, is not a broken appliance — it is an appliance that has been quietly starved of the air it burns.
Heating, cooling and the air around both
Gas furnaces and boilers, central air and heat pumps, ductwork, and the ventilation that decides whether any of it behaves. Houses and small commercial premises, in the same week, with the same instruments.
What is unusual about how we work is where we start. On a service visit we check what the appliance is drawing its combustion air from before we look at the appliance itself, because in a house that has been insulated, re-windowed and fitted with a powerful range hood since 1968, that is frequently the answer.
This site is set as a main column with notes in the margin, because that is how the work reads: a straightforward answer, and the exception beside it.
Heating
Gas furnaces and boilers serviced with a combustion analyser and a written result, diagnosed from the cheap end, and replaced only when the readings say so. Oil where it is still in place, which in this part of Erie County it sometimes is.
A service here produces numbers — combustion figures, static pressure, temperature rise — so the next visit has something to compare against.
Cooling
Central air, heat pumps and ductless. Charge measured against the conditions on the day and the plate figure rather than topped up on sight, and sized from a calculation rather than from what came out.
Buffalo cools for a few months a year, so a cooling fault often goes unnoticed until it is expensive. Spring is the cheap time to find it.
Ducts and ventilation
Static pressure, register-by-register airflow, duct leakage, returns that were never big enough, bathroom and kitchen extract that actually terminates outside, and make-up air where a building has been tightened up.
Most “the system is too small” calls end here. It is measurable in half an hour and it is far cheaper than equipment.
Where does your furnace get its air?
Every fuel-burning appliance needs a supply of air to burn and a way to get its exhaust out of the building. Both are designed in. Both can be undone afterwards, by an insulation job, a new range hood, a basement remodel, or a door that somebody started closing.
The page crosses three kinds of appliance with four places they sit, and says what to check in each combination — along with the one rule that overrides all twelve.
A sounding carbon monoxide alarm is a 911 call from outside the building, not a service call. That is said on the page before anything else, in every state of the tool.
Houses and premises
Homes. Post-war ranches, capes and two-storeys across Cheektowaga, Depew and Lancaster, plus the basements that were finished later and the additions that were never properly served. Gas heating almost everywhere, with oil still in some streets.
Businesses. Plazas on Union and French, restaurants, salons, professional suites, clinics and light industrial. Planned maintenance with a record per unit, extract with the make-up air it needs, and fit-out work commissioned rather than switched on and left.
Neither page is a paragraph with a photograph. Each is written for the people who actually read it.
What this website will not tell you
Each one would be a number we invented.
| Not stated | Why |
|---|---|
| A price | A flame sensor and a boiler replacement are not the same visit. You get a fixed figure on the phone once we know what is installed. |
| A response time | We will not promise an hour on the first cold night of the year when half of Erie County has lost heat. |
| A saving | “Cut your bills by a third” depends on your house, your habits and your tariff. Nobody can know it from a web page. |
| How long it will last | Two identical furnaces on the same street last very different lengths of time. The plate gives you the age; nothing gives you the future. |
Asked often enough to answer here
What is combustion air and why do you check it first?
Every fuel-burning appliance needs air to burn and a way out for its exhaust. Both are designed in when it is installed — and both can be undone afterwards by new windows, blown insulation, a powerful range hood, a finished basement or a louvred door replaced with a solid one. None of those is a mistake, but the furnace was set up before they happened. There is a page on this site that crosses three kinds of appliance with four places they sit.
My pilot goes out when the dryer is running. Is that a coincidence?
No, and it is worth acting on. A clothes dryer throws a large amount of air out of the house for an hour at a time. In a confined utility room with an appliance that takes its combustion air from that room, the two are in direct competition. It is a real mechanism, it is measurable, and it is ordinarily fixable with a combustion air duct or a grille.
How do I know which kind of furnace I have?
Look at what leaves it. Two white plastic pipes going out through a wall means sealed combustion, which brings its own air in from outside. A metal flue with a small fan on the appliance is induced draft. A metal flue with a hood over it going into a masonry chimney, and no fan, is natural draft — the oldest arrangement and the one most affected by changes to the house.
One room never keeps up. Do I need a bigger furnace?
Almost certainly not. It is nearly always airflow — a branch added when a basement or attic was finished, a crushed flexible run, a damper closed years ago, or a return duct far too small. We measure static pressure and the airflow at that register and at one that works, which turns it into two numbers. An oversized furnace would make it slightly worse.
Why will you not put prices on the website?
Because a flame sensor and a boiler replacement are not the same visit, and a number on a web page would be a fiction for one of them. You get a fixed figure on the phone once we know what is installed.
Which areas do you cover?
Cheektowaga, Depew, Lancaster, West Seneca, Sloan, Williamsville, Amherst and the east side of Buffalo.
Where we are
1270 French Rd, Cheektowaga, NY 14227. Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 4.30pm.
We cover Cheektowaga, Depew, Lancaster, West Seneca, Sloan, Williamsville, Amherst and the east side of Buffalo.