Heating and Cooling in Inkster, MI

Inkster homes and how they are heated

By Census Bureau estimates, the 1940s and 1950s account for more than half of Inkster's homes, about twice their share across Metro Detroit as a whole. Nearly three in four are detached houses, and the mix includes two-story brick duplexes. About eight in ten homes heat with utility gas and about one in six with electricity, against about one in nine across Metro Detroit.

There are four of us at Maverick Heating and Cooling, a family-owned business 7 years old. We turn up at the time we gave you, and you hear what we found and what it will cost before any work starts. Our promise on the finished job is short: 100% satisfaction guaranteed. We serve every city within 50 miles of Dearborn Heights: that means Inkster, and Garden City and Westland on its borders.

Not every Inkster house has a basement

The National Register of Historic Places file for a house on Williams Street, built in 1950, describes 768 square feet of wood-frame house on a crawl space, with the mechanical equipment in a utility room on the ground floor. The file calls the design typical of many Inkster neighborhoods of the 1940s and 1950s.

In a house like that, the furnace usually sits in a utility room, not an open basement. Many gas appliances burn air drawn from the room around them, so keep any door or wall grille clear and store nothing against them. A replacement has to fit that room and blow the same way as the old furnace, which is often down into ducts under the floor.

The 2021 sewer backups in Inkster basements

Other Inkster houses have basements, and heavy rain in late June 2021 and again on July 16 put sewage in some of them. Residents told WDIV of a furnace under water, and the mayor's office said the city had ordered 400 clean-up kits from Wayne County.

After a furnace or water heater has stood in water, leave it off until it has been checked. The industry's guidance is to replace flood-damaged gas valves and controls, and in many cases the whole unit. We replace both.

About one Inkster home in six has electric heat

Baseboard heaters and electric furnaces turn electricity straight into heat. A heat pump pulls heat in from the outdoor air instead, so it gets more heat from the same electricity and is worth a look when that equipment wears out. You can request a free quote by text. A house on baseboards usually has no ducts for central air, so a ductless system cools it room by room. Most ductless systems are heat pumps, so they heat as well.