HVAC Repair in Kent, OH
Homes here need heat from October through May and cooling from June through August. If your system quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Portage County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eleven months of work, most winters below freezing
Your furnace or heat pump is doing something almost every month here. Heat runs October through May, eight months, and cooling picks up the other three. Only one month a year gets a break. On winter nights that average 21°F, the system cycles on and off for hours to hold the house steady, and each cycle puts wear on the igniter and the parts that light the burner. Summer afternoons averaging 81°F push the system the other way, running the compressor hard to keep up.
Portage County has had 93 damaging wind events and 12 winter storms over the past ten years, and across Ohio, 18% of households lost power for at least 24 hours in 2024. A furnace or air conditioner that sits through an outage like that can come back on with a fault it didn't have before, and if yours runs on gas like most homes here do, it still needs power to fire up and run.
- 8 months
- October through May, your system heats
- 3 months
- June through August, it cools
- 21°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 81°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A new furnace and air conditioner would cut about $180 a year off heating and cooling for a typical Portage County home.
Estimates for a typical Portage County home, compared with an older unit built to the previous federal minimum, from EIA household energy data, Ohio fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
Repair makes sense when one part has failed.
Replacement makes sense when the furnace's heat exchanger is cracked, the air conditioner's compressor has failed, or repairs keep coming.
In Ohio, HVAC licensing for homes is left to the counties.
Portage County sets its own rule for who can do HVAC work on a house, because Ohio leaves that decision to the counties instead of running a state license. Whatever the county requires is tied to the address rather than a state record. Ohio does say a home contractor carries at least $250,000 in liability insurance, but that is part of the state's definition of a contractor, not a license anyone had to earn.
For a repair to a heating and cooling system, that leaves the county as the only place any accountability comes from here. There is no state board that tested this contractor or holds a file on them. The $250,000 insurance figure is something a legitimate contractor carries, but it comes from the definition written into state law, not from a test or a record of work done.
Source: Ohio Legislative Service Commission
- Why is my heat not working?
- Start with the thermostat and the power to the furnace. If the thermostat screen is blank, check the breaker and any switch that looks like a light switch near the furnace, since that shuts it off too. Gas furnaces also need the pilot or igniter to work and the gas valve open, so if you smell no gas and hear no ignition attempt, that is worth telling the contractor. With winter nights here dropping to around 21°F, a furnace that is not heating is not something to leave overnight.
- Why is my system running but not cooling the house?
- The fan running without cool air usually points to the outdoor unit, not the indoor one. Go outside and check if the condenser fan is spinning. If it is not, or if the coil is covered in ice, the system needs a contractor before it runs any longer, since a frozen coil or a stalled compressor can turn into a bigger repair. A dirty air filter can also block airflow enough that the house never cools, so check that first since it takes a minute.
- What can I check before calling for HVAC repair?
- Check the thermostat batteries and settings first, since a thermostat stuck in the wrong mode looks exactly like a broken system. Next check the breaker panel and any power switch near the indoor and outdoor units. Look at the air filter and replace it if it is visibly dirty, since restricted airflow causes problems that look like bigger failures. If the outdoor unit is covered in ice, snow, or debris after a storm, clear what you can safely reach, since Kent gets its share of winter storms and wind events that can knock things loose or block the unit.