Heating and Cooling in Westland, MI

Westland heating and cooling: a city built mostly from 1940 to 1980

Westland was mostly rural until World War II, then filled in fast. By Census Bureau estimates about seven in ten homes here date from 1940 to 1979 and only about one in thirty is older, against about one in eight across Metro Detroit as a whole. So the furnace is rarely the original, and it does not always sit in a basement. Fewer than six in ten homes are detached houses, and more than a quarter are in apartment buildings of five or more units, where the first thing to ask is whose equipment it is.

Family-owned and 7 years in business, Maverick Heating and Cooling works with a crew of four and puts the same promise on every job: 100% satisfaction guaranteed. Being on time is part of the job. Honest work means that before any work starts you know what is wrong, what could be done and what each would cost. We serve every city within 50 miles of Dearborn Heights, which takes in Westland and neighboring Garden City and Canton. Call 248-930-2080.

Norwayne: houses on slabs, with no basement

Norwayne, the neighborhood Venoy Road runs through, was built starting in 1942 to house war-plant workers. Its National Register paperwork describes 1,900 original homes in four-unit row houses, two-story duplexes and small single-family houses, all wood-frame on concrete slabs with no basement. Every unit got a gas water heater, and all but the one-bedroom units a forced-air furnace and a utility room.

With no basement, the furnace and water heater sit in the house itself, usually in that utility room. Keep stored things well clear of them: gas equipment needs space and air around it. The same paperwork says many Norwayne furnaces and water heaters were upgraded in the 1990s. Any still running are about 30 years old, well past the 15 to 20 years a furnace typically lasts and the 10 to 15 of a tank water heater.

Annapolis Park and Westland's 1950s to 1970s houses

Annapolis Park, near Middlebelt Road, is 354 houses built between 1953 and 1957, nearly all one-story ranches and most of them brick. Citywide, about three homes in ten are from the 1940s and 1950s and four in ten from the 1960s and 1970s. A house from either period has likely outlived at least two furnaces, while the ducts are often original. A typical home's ducts lose 20 to 30 percent of their air through leaks, so have the ductwork checked before you buy new equipment.