Furnace Repair in Airdrie
Most of Airdrie was built in a hurry. Whole neighbourhoods went up through the 2000s and 2010s, each with a builder-installed furnace that is now old enough for its wear parts to start failing. That is most of what we fix here.
Nearly all of it is repairable. An igniter, a flame sensor, an inducer motor, a pressure switch, a capacitor or a blocked condensate trap accounts for the bulk of no-heat calls, and those are all common parts. We find the failed part by testing it, not by replacing things until the heat comes back, and you get the price before anything goes in.
When a repair isn't worth making, we say so and explain why. Replacement has its own page — furnace installation in Airdrie — and we would rather fix a furnace that has years left in it than sell you one it doesn't need.
Every major brand, including the builder-grade lines common in Airdrie's newer communities, and AirEase, which we install as an authorized AirEase dealer. We dispatch from both Airdrie and Calgary, so Airdrie calls are usually handled locally; Calgary furnace repair is the same work south of the city. Call 587-834-3668.
No heat in Airdrie? Call 587-834-3668 and we'll be straight with you about when we can get there.
Call 587-834-3668“Had a new furnace installed today by Shaun and Jason. Shaun was honest and professional with diagnosing the problem with the furnace and discussing the best options going forward. Would definitely recommend them to anyone needing plumbing or heating repairs. Thank you very much for the awesome service you provided.”
Bonnie Offredi
Calgary · 7 months ago
The furnaces in Airdrie basements
The age of the house says a lot about the furnace in it, and about what is likely to be wrong with it.
Growth-era homes, original furnace
Coopers Crossing, Ravenswood, Kings Heights, Hillcrest, Reunion, Williamstown and the rest of the neighbourhoods built through Airdrie's boom mostly still run the furnace the builder put in. Builders choose on price, so these tend to be entry-level single-stage units, often squeezed into a tight mechanical room under the stairs. They are now at the age where igniters, inducer motors, pressure switches and blower motors start to give out one at a time — normally a repair, not a replacement.
Built before 2010: likely mid-efficiency
Canada's 90% efficiency minimum for gas furnaces came in at the end of 2009. Plenty of Airdrie houses built before then got a mid-efficiency furnace that vents up a metal flue through the roof, rather than a condensing one with white plastic pipes out the side wall. They have no condensate system to freeze, but they are older, and the flue and heat exchanger deserve a careful look on every call.
The older streets near the city centre
Big Springs, Meadowbrook and the established streets closer to downtown have houses that may be on their second or third furnace. Here we find the widest spread: a recent high-efficiency replacement in one basement, a furnace that has outlived its parts supply in the next. Age matters less than history, so tell us what has been replaced and when.
Condensing furnaces in open wind
Side-wall PVC vents on a house that faces open prairie take the wind and the drifting snow head on. Frost builds on the exhaust, snow packs into the intake, and gusts can briefly interrupt the draft the pressure switch is watching for. The furnace reads that as a venting fault and shuts down. Sometimes that needs a repair; sometimes it needs a better termination.
What your furnace is telling you
Symptoms first, because that's what you can see. This is what each one usually turns out to be when we open the cabinet.
Runs, but the air coming out is cold
The blower is working and the burners aren't. The furnace tried to light and gave up — a worn igniter, a flame sensor that can't prove the flame, or a lockout after repeated failed attempts. On a condensing unit, a blocked condensate trap stops ignition too. Our write-up on a furnace blowing cold air goes through it step by step.
Lights, then shuts off after a few seconds
Almost always the flame sensor. It has to confirm a flame within a few seconds or the gas valve closes as a safety measure. A thin coating on the sensor rod is enough to break that signal. Cleaning fixes it for a while; a sensor that keeps coating over gets replaced.
Hums or clicks, and nothing else happens
The thermostat is calling and the furnace is trying. A hum with no inducer spinning points at the inducer motor or its capacitor. Clicking with no ignition points at the pressure switch, its tubing, or the venting it monitors. This is the group of faults that shows up most after a windy week or a heavy snowfall.
Short-cycles: on, off, on again
Short bursts of heat followed by a shutdown usually mean the furnace is overheating and the high limit switch is doing its job. The cause is almost always airflow — a clogged filter, closed registers, a failing blower or a blocked return — and replacing the limit switch without fixing that just moves the problem along.
Blower won't stop, or won't start
A blower that runs non-stop is often a thermostat set to 'on' rather than 'auto', which is worth checking before you call. One that won't start at all is usually its run capacitor, the motor itself, or the control board that tells it when to run. Our page on furnace blower issues covers the whole list.
Water on the floor around the furnace
On a high-efficiency furnace, that is condensate that should have reached the floor drain. A cracked trap, a disconnected hose, a condensate pump that has quit or a drain line that has frozen are the common causes. It rarely stops the heat straight away, but it will, and the water damages the furnace base and the floor.
A new smell or a new noise
A burning-dust smell on the first cold day of autumn is normal and clears in an hour. A burning plastic smell, a screech from the blower, or a bang when the burners light is not, and should be looked at before the furnace runs much longer.
Worth checking before you call
None of these needs a tool or the cover off. Each one has saved someone a service call.
The thermostat
Set to heat, set above the room temperature, and — if it runs on batteries — with a display that isn't blank or faint. Smart thermostats that lose their Wi-Fi or their power connection can stop calling for heat without making it obvious.
The furnace switch and the breaker
There is a light switch on or near the furnace that turns it off. It gets flipped by accident more often than you'd think, especially in a mechanical room that doubles as storage. Check the furnace breaker in the panel too.
The filter
A filter that is grey and caked is enough on its own to make a furnace overheat and shut itself down. Swap it, then give the furnace a few minutes to reset and try again.
The vents outside
If you have a high-efficiency furnace, find the two white pipes where they leave the house. After snow or a windy night, they can be drifted over or iced shut. Clear them gently by hand and give the furnace a few minutes.
Don't keep resetting it
Cutting the power to a furnace in lockout will often make it try again. Once is a reasonable test. Doing it repeatedly lets gas collect in a furnace that is struggling to light, and that is how a minor ignition fault becomes a dangerous one. If one reset doesn't hold, call.
When to repair, and when to stop
Most of the furnaces we see in Airdrie are worth fixing. These are the cases where they aren't.
Single part, furnace in reasonable shape
An igniter, a flame sensor, a capacitor, a pressure switch or an inducer on a furnace that is otherwise healthy is a repair. That describes most of the growth-era furnaces in Airdrie right now — old enough to need parts, young enough to be worth them.
An expensive part on an old furnace
A control board, a blower motor or a gas valve on a furnace approaching twenty years is a real conversation. We tell you what the repair costs, what else on that furnace is near the end, and what a replacement would cost, then leave the decision with you. Furnace replacement runs $4,500 to $9,600 as of September 2026, depending mostly on the unit and what the venting and gas line need.
Parts that no longer exist
Some older furnaces use control boards and motors that are no longer made. A universal replacement part sometimes works; sometimes it doesn't, and chasing a discontinued part through a heating season is its own kind of cost. We'll tell you which situation you are in.
A cracked heat exchanger
This one isn't a judgement call. A cracked heat exchanger can let combustion gases, including carbon monoxide, into the air the blower sends around the house. We do not patch them, we show you what we found, and the next step is replacement.
Airdrie Furnace Repair FAQs
How much does furnace repair cost in Airdrie?
It depends on what failed, and we don't guess at a number before we know. A flame sensor that only needs cleaning is at the cheap end. An igniter, a capacitor or a pressure switch is a modest part. A control board, an inducer or a blower motor costs more.
What we can promise is the order of things: we find the failed part, tell you what the repair costs, and do nothing until you have agreed to it.
My furnace is fifteen years old. Is it worth repairing?
Usually, yes. A fifteen-year-old furnace in reasonable condition with one failed part is a good candidate for repair, and that describes a lot of Airdrie's builder-installed furnaces right now.
The answer changes when the failed part is one of the expensive ones, when other parts are visibly near the end, or when the heat exchanger is in question. In those cases we give you the repair price and the replacement price side by side and let you choose.
Why does my furnace keep shutting down when it's windy?
On a high-efficiency furnace, the pressure switch watches the draft through the vent pipes. Strong gusts against a side-wall termination, frost on the exhaust or snow packed into the intake can upset that draft for long enough to trip it, and the furnace shuts down to be safe.
If it happens now and then in a storm, clearing the vents may be all it needs. If it happens every windy day, the termination location or the pressure switch itself needs looking at, and that is something we can fix.
Do you repair builder-grade furnaces?
Yes, and a lot of them. Entry-level furnaces installed when a house was built are often cheaper to keep running than people expect, because their common parts are widely available.
We repair every major brand, including AirEase, Carrier, Lennox, Trane, Goodman, Daikin, Rheem and the rest, high-efficiency and mid-efficiency alike.
My furnace is flashing a light. What does it mean?
Most modern furnaces have a small LED on the control board that flashes a fault code, and the key to the code is usually printed on a label inside the furnace door.
The code tells you what the furnace thinks is wrong — a pressure switch that didn't close, a flame that wasn't proven, a limit that tripped. It narrows things down, but it doesn't identify the failed part on its own. Tell us the code when you call; it helps us bring the right part.
When can you get to me in Airdrie?
We dispatch from both Airdrie and Calgary, so Airdrie calls are usually handled locally. Beyond that it depends on the day and the weather, and we would rather give you an honest answer than a promise.
If you are without heat and have young children, older family members or anyone unwell in the house, tell us when you call.
I smell gas near the furnace. What should I do?
Leave the house first, without switching lights or appliances on or off. Once you're outside, call 911 or your gas utility's emergency line. Don't go back in until they have cleared it.
Once the emergency side is dealt with, we can find and repair whatever caused it. Our article on a furnace that smells like gas explains what the smell can and can't mean.
Can a tune-up stop this happening again?
It catches most of the parts that give warning before they fail — flame sensors, igniters, capacitors, condensate traps — which is most of what fails in winter. It won't catch everything.
We do annual tune-ups in Airdrie on the same terms as Calgary; furnace tune-ups covers what the visit includes.
Related pages for Airdrie homes.
If the repair turns into a bigger question, or you've got something else to sort out while we're in the house.
Furnace Installation Airdrie
When repair no longer makes sense — sized, vented and installed for Airdrie homes.
See serviceFurnace Tune-Ups
Annual maintenance with combustion and CO testing, Calgary and Airdrie.
See serviceHumidifiers in Airdrie
Whole-home humidifiers fitted to the furnace for dry prairie winters.
See serviceHeat Pumps Airdrie
Cold-climate heat pumps paired with a gas furnace.
See serviceBoiler Repair Airdrie
Hot-water heating instead of forced air? Boiler repair is here.
See serviceAirdrie Plumbers
Plumbing and heating across Airdrie, from one team.
See serviceSimple, honest, on your schedule.
Four steps, in the same order every time. The order is what keeps a cheap repair from turning into an expensive guess.
You call, we ask questions
What the furnace is doing, how old it is, whether any lights are flashing on the control board. A few answers on the phone often narrow it to two or three parts before we arrive.
Watch it try to run
We start the furnace and watch the sequence — inducer, pressure switch, igniter glow, gas valve, flame, blower — and note exactly where it stops. The board's fault code, if there is one, gets read and checked against what we see.
Test, then price
The suspect part gets measured. Once we know what failed, you get the price of the repair and our honest view on whether it's worth doing on a furnace of that age.
Repair and run it through
The part goes in, and the furnace runs through complete heating cycles while we watch the readings. A combustion check follows any work on the burner side. We don't leave until it has heated the house properly.
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Furnace Installation in Airdrie
A furnace sized for Airdrie isn't a furnace sized for Calgary. We sit higher and more exposed on open prairie, and the constant wind pulls heat off a house faster than a still −35°C night ever will. FlameTech sizes and installs furnaces for that real-world exposure — not a generic square-footage rule of thumb — and handles the gas, venting, permit, and inspection start to finish.
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Where we cover Airdrie.
Local dispatch from Coopers Crossing across every Airdrie neighbourhood. Find your area for build-era notes, hard-water patterns, and the systems we see most.
Also covering nearby Chestermere, Cochrane, and Carstairs.
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