Keeping Brier's gas furnaces running

More than a third of Brier's homes were built in the 1980s alone. Few of those houses still have their first furnace, so the units we open tend to be second-generation equipment from the late 1990s through the 2010s. Many are 80% furnaces with a metal flue through the roof; a growing number are 90%-plus condensing models with white PVC pipes out a side wall. On a condensing furnace in a wooded yard, the intake and exhaust ends deserve a look each fall, because fir needles, leaves and the odd wasp nest block them more often than owners expect. Older 80% units have their own weak spot: a draft hood and flue that can rust through after decades of wet winters, which we check whenever we are on site.

Big trees also mean outages. During the November 2024 bomb cyclone, Snohomish County PUD reported more than 70,000 customers without power at once, and Brier's tall conifers are exactly where lines come down. A gas furnace needs electricity for its inducer, igniter and blower, so it stops with the grid. When power returns, most restart on their own. The ones that stay silent usually need a reset, a small fuse or a board check, so switch the furnace off and on once, then call us instead of cycling it again and again.

Brier has no state route through it, so we come in from Mountlake Terrace on 228th or 236th St SW and are often at the door within ten minutes. That short trip matters most on the mornings after Convergence Zone snow, which tends to hang right over the King and Snohomish county line, when the hills off Brier Road are slow and every furnace in town is running flat out. With no highway running through town, our arrival times in Brier stay predictable even when I-5 is backed up.