`I can tell a lot about a family by looking at their furnace filter,” says Tom Schuring, one of four furnace and air conditioner service technicians employed by Elgin Sheet Metal Co. in South Elgin. “The filter tells me if they have pets, if they smoke, how often they burn candles and how they cook.”
The son of a tool-and-die maker, Schuring left his native Elgin after graduating from Larkin High School to join the Navy. He completed the Navy’s electrician school, then worked as a Navy electrician in Italy and Florida.
By the time he joined Elgin Sheet Metal in 1987, he had combined his Navy training with a stint as a commercial heating installer. By then, he knew the “tin knocker” trade well enough to skip the company’s apprenticeship program.
Now, Schuring reports to his office by 8 a.m. five days a week to pick up job tickets. By the time he gets them, the receptionist has collected information about the ailing furnaces or air conditioners on his list, and the dispatcher has grouped his tickets into geographical areas.
“Women give more accurate descriptions of what’s wrong when they call,” Schuring says. “They say something like, `The furnace makes a big boom, then there’s no heat.’ That tells us it could be a delayed ignition or just expanding/contracting ductwork. But men are more likely to say what they think is the problem, like, `I have a broken gas valve.’ They’re usually wrong.”
Driving from one job to another in a company van, Schuring listens to Dr. Laura, then Rush Limbaugh on the radio. Most of his customers meet him at their homes. Some drop off house keys at his office on their way to work. “But you’d be surprised how many people just leave their houses unlocked,” he says.
Schuring keeps his van stocked with vacuums, hand tools, pressure gauges, carbon monoxide detectors and as many parts as he can fit. “That way, 80 percent of the time, I have the right part in the van,” he says.
The minute he walks into a home, he can tell if the problem is a plugged-up flue. “People living there don’t notice because it’s gradual,” he says. “But I know right away because acidic gas in the air makes my eyes water.”
Schuring doesn’t mind customers looking over his shoulder as he works. “There are some people who try to tell you how to do your job. But, usually, people watch because they want to know what’s wrong,” he says. “That’s fine; they should know.”
The age of a house dictates what type of furnace Schuring will find there, unless its original furnace has been replaced. “The oldest are the steam boilers from the ’20s,” he says. “I still see some old oil furnaces from the ’30s that have been converted to gas. The big change came about 10 years ago when residential furnaces became electronic.”
The good news about the electronic varieties, says Schuring, is they are more efficient than the monstrous units they replaced. The bad news is the electronic parts are more sensitive.
“The old gas-fired furnaces can last 40 years or more,” Schuring says. “But many people replace them with newer, more efficient furnaces before they wear out.” Removing these dinosaurs is a major demolition job, he says. “I keep some of the parts to use for repairs, then give the metal to metal salvagers.”
The current builders’ trend of placing the furnace in a first-floor utility room, near the washer and dryer, is not healthy, says Schuring. “The cleanest furnace is the one in the basement, away from everything else,” he says. “When it is near the washing machine, the fumes from the chlorine bleach and fabric softeners (liquids or sheets) coat the furnace sensors so they can’t sense signals. And lint from the clothes dryer gets sucked into the burners.”
Lint isn’t the only stuff Schuring has pulled out of faulty furnaces. “You name it, I’ve found it in there: dead ducks, raccoons, birds, rats, squirrels and a pet lizard,” he reports. Parents usually need not fret about the toys, cereal pieces and other items that children toss down vents, though. “Most of it never makes it to the furnace,” says Schuring. “It just gets stuck in the ductwork.”
Air conditioners are different animals, says Schuring. They haven’t been on the market as long, so the oldest air conditioners he sees are 30-something years old. “But the average lifespan is only 15 years, so you rarely see them that old,” he says.
Compared to furnaces, air conditioner components haven’t changed much, says Schuring. “But they have become more efficient and have fewer moving parts so there’s less chance of breakdown,” he says.
Business is brisk in the fall, when Schuring’s schedule is booked with furnace checkups. Then it heats up again with each lengthy cold spell. “That’s not because the coldest weather causes them to break. It’s because the furnace gets a good workout then and some parts wear out,” he says.
The older the customer, the less tolerance of broken furnaces and meat-locker temperatures, notes Schuring. “Older people want the heat, but they tolerate broken air conditioners because they grew up without them,” he says. “Younger people tolerate broken furnaces longer, but want their air conditioners fixed right away.”
When ragweed blooms, many of Schuring’s customers hire him to install electronic air filters that remove allergens by filtering them through a gridwork. “The best way to explain how they work in layman’s terms is to compare them to bug zappers, except they zap the allergens,” explains Schuring.
“The cost is mostly labor because we have to move the ductwork to make room for the 7-inch filter, which goes where a regular, 1-inch filter goes. I also recommend these for smokers. They are so efficient, you can blow smoke through one side and it comes out clear from the other side.”
Schuring and his Elgin Sheet Metal colleagues don’t work on weekends, although they are on call for emergencies. “Saturdays and Sundays are family days,” he says.
“It takes a real emergency for us to work then. A broken furnace on a 20-degree day is an emergency, especially if there are older people or little kids in the house. A broken humidifier is not an emergency.”
Off-duty, Schuring likes to go on-line, with a fishing pole, that is. From their Plato Center home, Schuring takes his family–wife Renate and their sons, ages 5 and 1–and their 17-foot boat to southern Wisconsin.
Fishing, he says, gives him time to chill out and reflect on his good fortune. “I’m so lucky because I really like what I do and have no desire to enter another trade,” he says.
What can homeowners do to keep their heating and cooling systems safe and in good repair?
“Keep your registers open,” says Schuring. “The new equipment is very sensitive to the air flow backing up because of closed registers.
“Have your furnace checked once a year. Change the filter once a month, or more often if you smoke. I recommend the pleated kind of filter. Keep bushes and debris away from your air conditioner. Keep combustible things away from your furnace.”
Finally, Schuring warns, don’t even think about fixing your own furnace. “This is not a do-it-yourself project like a leaky faucet,” he says. “A furnace deals with two dangerous elements–electricity and fire. Call a professional.”
For more information, contact Elgin Sheet Metal Co., 847-742-3486.
