Heating & Furnace Repair in Southwest Florida

Heat matters here about six days a year, and those six days always arrive at once in January when it drops into the thirties overnight and half of Lee County discovers their heat has not worked since the last cold snap. True Care Air services heating across Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Lehigh Acres, Bonita Springs, Estero and Naples. Licensed CAC1824801 and insured.

What You Probably Actually Have

Very few Southwest Florida homes have a furnace in the way somebody from Ohio means it. What you almost certainly have is one of two things. A heat pump, which is your air conditioner running in reverse to pull heat from outside air, or electric heat strips, which are essentially a large heating element inside your air handler. Plenty of homes have both, with the strips backing up the heat pump when it gets too cold outside for the pump to keep up.

This matters because the failure modes are completely different from a gas furnace, and so is the repair.

What Fails, and Why It Always Fails in January

Equipment that sits unused for eleven months does not age gracefully. Heat strips corrode and their sequencers stick. The reversing valve on a heat pump seizes because nothing has asked it to move since last winter. Contactors pit. And nobody finds out until the first genuinely cold night, which is exactly when every HVAC company in the county has a full board.

Common symptoms we see: the system blows air that is not warm, the breaker trips when heat is called for, you get a burning smell on first startup, the heat runs constantly without getting there, or the outdoor unit runs in heating mode and ices over and never defrosts properly.

The Burning Smell Is Usually Fine, Once

If you turn the heat on for the first time in a year and smell something burning for a few minutes, that is normally dust burning off the heat strips and it passes. If it persists past ten or fifteen minutes, or if you smell anything electrical or acrid, shut it off at the thermostat and call. That one is not worth waiting on.

What It Costs

A heating diagnostic is the standard $109 residential rate, credited toward the repair when we do the work, or $129 on a weekend during the day. After 5pm or before 8am it is $150. You get a full price before anything begins. See after-hours service for how the rest of that works.

Test It in November, Not January

Here is the single most useful thing on this page. Some evening in November, put the thermostat on heat and raise it five degrees above the room temperature. Give it ten minutes. If warm air comes out of the vents, you are set for the winter. If it does not, you have found the problem on a comfortable night in November when we can get to you tomorrow, rather than on the coldest night of the year alongside everyone else in Fort Myers.

Our fall maintenance visit checks the heating side as well as cooling for exactly this reason. That is half of what the second visit in a True Care Club year is for.

Heat Pump Replacement

If the system is old enough that the heating side is failing, the cooling side is usually not far behind, and in this climate the cooling side is what you actually care about. We would rather have that conversation honestly than replace a reversing valve in a system with two summers left. You can see what a replacement actually costs, we install American Standard equipment as an authorized dealer, and 0% financing is available for qualified buyers.

Book Heating Service

Call or text (239) 810-2500, or book online. The phone is answered around the clock, including during a cold snap.

True Care Air LLC | License CAC1824801 | Serving Southwest Florida | (239) 810-2500 | TrueCareAir.com