Furnace repair · Nine Mile Falls & Long Lake
Nine Mile Falls furnace repair for heat that fades a degree a week
No gas main runs out Highway 291, so Nine Mile Falls heats with electric furnaces, propane and a wood stove kept ready. We repair the slow electric decline and the sudden propane lockout alike.
- Drive time
- About twenty minutes, past the Nine Mile Dam and up the hill.
- Suncrest
- Mostly electric furnaces, many with a heat pump added later.
- Lake cabins
- Older propane furnaces and wall furnaces along Long Lake.
An electric furnace in Nine Mile Falls almost never quits in a single night. One heating element burns open, then a sequencer sticks, and the house in Suncrest or down by the lake runs a degree colder each week until the wood stove is quietly doing most of the work. Owners often live with that for a whole winter before they call, paying a bill that stays high while the thermostat never quite reaches its setpoint. By the time we arrive, two or three stages may be out, and the furnace has been running far longer than it should to deliver far less heat.
Propane furnaces in the older cabins fail the opposite way: a click, three tries and a lockout light on a cold morning. We repair both, along with the propane wall furnaces still found on the shoreline. Same-day windows are held for houses without heat from Monday to Saturday, and each repair is quoted as one written price that includes the $99 diagnostic. When a part must be ordered for an older unit, the return trip out Highway 291 adds no second trip fee.
Nine Mile Falls furnace symptoms, electric and propane
| What you notice | What it usually is | What we do |
|---|---|---|
| Fan on, air tepid, power bill unchanged | Burned-open element, or a sequencer failing to add the next stage | Ammeter on every element; failed parts replaced |
| Breaker snaps off as the stages come on | Element shorted to ground, a dying sequencer, or a breaker fatigued by years of trips | Short traced with a meter; element replaced, or a tired breaker flagged for you |
| Propane unit clicks without lighting | Igniter cracked on a cold start, or the valve short of tank pressure | New igniter; regulator output and manifold pressure measured |
| Lights, runs a few seconds, quits | Filmed-over flame sensor, or a flue narrowed by a snow drift or a nest | Sensor cleaned or replaced; vent and pressure switch tested |
| Cabin wall furnace will not stay lit | Worn thermocouple, pilot assembly or gas valve | Pilot parts or valve replaced, vent inspected, leak check done |
| Heat pump on, vents blowing cool | Backup strips not stepping in, or the heat pump-to-furnace handoff set wrong | Strips repaired, staging reset so the backup engages on time |
Suncrest electric, Long Lake propane, a wood stove for backup
Highway 291 has never carried a natural gas main, so every furnace in Nine Mile Falls burns propane or runs on electricity, and almost every house keeps a wood stove for the nights that outrun both. Up in Suncrest the norm is an electric furnace, often with a heat pump added years after the house was built. Down on the Long Lake shoreline and out Charles Road toward Tumtum, the cabins tend to have older propane furnaces, now and then a wall furnace, put in when the property was a summer getaway and nobody imagined it carrying a January. Plenty of those cabins have become full-time homes, and the original equipment is feeling it.
That mix produces three kinds of calls. The electric call is gradual: half-heat, a high bill, and a sequencer or element we find with an ammeter. The propane call is sudden: a cracked igniter on a cold morning, sometimes made worse by low tank pressure on the coldest nights or a regulator crusted with frost. The third is the paired system, where the heat pump and furnace disagree about who is heating, so the strips never come on when the heat pump falls behind. A drifted vent can add a fourth; snow or a bird’s nest narrowing a flue will trip the pressure switch exactly as a failed part would. Power flickers along 291 are common enough that we meter a control board before ever calling it dead.
Electric furnaces from Nordyne, Intertherm, Goodman and Coleman, propane units from Rheem, Lennox, Bryant, Carrier, York and Trane, and cabin wall furnaces are all regular work. The diagnosis includes a check of the breaker, disconnect and circuit, and the technicians’ EPA 608 Universal certification covers the heat pump sharing the ducts. The drive out past the dam carries no distance surcharge, a Saturday visit carries none either, and the written warranty that follows a repair at the lake reads the same as one written in town.
What Nine Mile Falls furnace repairs typically cost
Electric furnace work dominates here, so the figures we write most are for an element replacement, which starts at $200, and a sequencer or heat relay, starting at $150; on the propane side, an igniter begins at $175. These starting points describe Spokane-area norms, not your quote. The diagnostic produces your actual written price, with the $99 absorbed into it; an online booking is worth up to $50 off the repair itself.
| Repair | Price |
|---|---|
| Electric heat strip / element | from $200 |
| Sequencer or heat relay | from $150 |
| Furnace igniter | from $175 |
| Flame sensor cleaning or replacement | from $100 |
| Inducer motor | from $450 |
| Pressure switch | from $175 |
| Limit switch | from $150 |
| Furnace or air handler control board | from $350 |
Starting prices in the Spokane area for 2026, part and work included. Not a quote: your exact price is in the written estimate after the $99 diagnostic.
Questions we hear
Our electric furnace runs constantly but the house never warms. Furnace or wiring?
Frequently a bit of each, so the technician tests both on the same visit. The usual culprit is an element that has burned open or a sequencer that no longer brings its stage on, and an ammeter on each one shows which. A failed element or sequencer is replaced under one written price, and if the breaker or the home’s wiring is involved, we tell you so plainly.
Do you work on propane wall furnaces in the Long Lake cabins?
Yes. The shoreline cabins still hold plenty of propane wall furnaces, and we work on their thermocouples, pilot assemblies, gas valves and venting, closing each job with a leak check. Some of those units are past saving or no longer safe to run; when that is the case you hear it at the diagnostic, and the $99 is all you pay.
The propane furnace at our cabin locks out only on the coldest mornings. Why?
Two things happen on a very cold night: tank pressure drops, and a regulator can frost over, so a nearly empty tank may not deliver enough gas just when the furnace needs the most. An igniter on its way out fails in that same pattern. Our technician reads the tank level, the regulator output and the manifold pressure, then tests the igniter and flame sensor, and repairs whatever the numbers point to.
We added a heat pump to our electric furnace. Why do the strips never come on?
The staging between the two is probably set wrong, or the strips themselves have failed and nobody noticed while the weather was mild. We test the heat pump, the strips and the thermostat logic that hands the load from one to the other. EPA 608 Universal certification covers the heat pump, so the whole system is one visit.
How soon can you get out Highway 291 when we have no heat?
Same day in most cases, Monday through Saturday; we run Suncrest and the lake roads regularly, and the earlier you call, the earlier the window. While you wait, check the furnace breaker and the filter, and if you have a heat pump, set the thermostat to emergency heat so the backup takes over.
Call, text or book
Whether your heat is fading slowly or stopped at dawn, call, text or book online; an online booking trims up to $50 from the repair. The $99 diagnostic is already included in the written price you approve.
Book a visit
Tell us what is going on
We call or text back to confirm a time window, usually the same day.
- $99 diagnostic Counted inside the written repair price you approve. Say no to the repair and it is the whole bill.
- Up to $50 off An HVAC repair booked online. Appliance repairs booked online: up to $22 off. Never taken off the diagnostic.
- Up to $500 off A full-system install booked through our site-visit form, first-year tune-up included. The site visit costs nothing.
Prefer to text? Send a photo of the model tag to (509) 370-5361.