Salt Lake City, Utah
Furnace, air conditioning and plumbing in Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City has the oldest housing of anywhere we cover, and old houses fail differently. Brick bungalows on ducting added decades after the house, cast-iron and clay sewer laterals with eighty years of tree roots around them, and a furnace that was replaced once in the nineties and never looked at again.
- Salt Lake County
- About 20 min from the shop
- About 4,250 ft
- Gas equipment derates ~9%
Straight answers
Salt Lake City questions we get asked
Do you cover Salt Lake City?
Yes, the whole city, and it is about twenty minutes from the shop in Sandy. Furnace, air conditioning, water heaters, plumbing, drains and sewer lines all come from the same company on the same licence.
Why do sewer lines fail so often in older Salt Lake City homes?
Because of what they are made of and what is growing next to them. Much of the housing in the Avenues, Sugar House, Liberty Wells and Rose Park sits on clay or cast-iron laterals laid decades ago, and mature street trees put roots into the joints. The roots let water out, the leak feeds the roots, and the line closes from the inside. We put a camera down it and you watch the screen with the technician — nobody should authorise a four-figure excavation on the strength of a description.
My furnace is in a 1920s house with ducting that was added later. Is that a problem?
It is the single most common thing we find in central Salt Lake City. Houses built for gravity heat or a coal stove had forced air bolted on afterwards, which usually means too few returns and undersized trunks. The symptom is one room that never gets warm and a furnace that short-cycles because it cannot move the air it is making. That is a duct problem wearing a furnace problem as a disguise, and replacing the furnace alone does not fix it.
Does the winter inversion affect my heating system?
Not the equipment, but it changes what the equipment pulls into the house. Salt Lake City sits at the bottom of the valley, which is exactly where cold air and everything suspended in it settles during an inversion. If you are weighing up money on filtration or on sealed-combustion equipment, the argument for it is stronger here than anywhere else on the Front.
On the ground
What we see in Salt Lake City homes
The housing is the story here
Central Salt Lake City was largely built before the Second World War and a good deal of it before the First. That means brick, plaster, narrow stairs down to a mechanical room that was never meant to be one, and equipment swapped in place two or three times around ducting that has not moved since. None of that is bad — these are good houses. It does mean a technician who has only ever worked in tract homes will misread them.
Water off the canyons, and what it does anyway
A large share of the city supply comes off the Wasatch canyons rather than out of valley wells, which makes it softer than what is pumped further south and west. It is still hard by any national measure and it still puts scale in the bottom of a water heater. What that buys a Salt Lake City tank is a couple of extra years, not a pass.
One call for the whole mechanical side
In a house this age the boundary between plumbing and heating is where jobs get bounced between contractors: the water heater, the humidifier, the condensate line, the hydronic leftovers of a system half-converted in 1970. We hold both licences, which mostly matters on the day it turns out the problem was on the other side of that line.
Everything we do here
Our services in Salt Lake City
All six are available across Salt Lake City, not only close to Sandy. Drains & Sewer leads this list because it is what this part of the valley calls about most.
- Drains & Sewer in Salt Lake CityClay and cast-iron laterals with decades of street-tree roots at the joints. Camera first, quote after.See drains & sewer
- Water Heaters in Salt Lake CityCanyon-fed water is softer than the south valley and still scales a tank. Eight to twelve years is the honest range.See water heaters
- Furnace Repair in Salt Lake CityDucting retrofitted into a pre-war house will short-cycle a perfectly good furnace. We look at both.See furnace repair
- Furnace Replacement in Salt Lake CityBryant Factory Authorized. Sized properly for your home, installed to spec, and quoted before we start.See furnace replacement
- Air Conditioning in Salt Lake CityBlowing warm, iced over, or tripping the breaker. Same-day AC service across the Wasatch Front.See air conditioning
- Plumbing in Salt Lake CityGalvanised supply, failed shut-offs and repipes in houses where nothing is where a plan would put it.See plumbing
In their words
What customers say
Great customer service. Luke is the man! He took the time to talk with me on his birthday and then had my central air up and running the next day.
We had our old furnace making a loud noise, apparently the motor had gone bad so we ended up having iRepair install a new furnace and AC with a new system that is much more efficient.
Eusebio came out within a couple hours, found that we had a couple filters that needed replaced and our cool had frozen over.
Emergency service
No heat, no cooling or a leak in Salt Lake City?
Call and speak to somebody now. We come out the same day wherever the schedule allows — and if we cannot reach Salt Lake City today we will tell you that on the phone rather than after you have waited in.