Furnace Repair in Mountain Home, AR
Furnaces here run from October through April. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Baxter County will get in touch.
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Seven months of work, and the power doesn't always stay on
Your furnace in Mountain Home runs October through April, seven months out of the year. On winter nights averaging 28°F, it cycles on and off for hours at a stretch, and every cycle puts wear on the igniter and the flame sensor. Those are the parts most likely to fail first, and when they do, the burner won't light at all.
More than half the homes here heat with electricity, so when the power goes out, the heat goes with it. Baxter County has seen 13 winter storms and 51 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and across Arkansas almost a quarter of households lost power for a full day or more in 2024. When the power comes back on, most furnaces restart on their own. If yours doesn't, the problem is likely with the furnace itself, not the outage.
- 7 months
- October through April, your furnace is on duty
- 28°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 13 winter storms
- in ten years, the nights a failure hurts most
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Arkansas requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
The license belongs to the contractor, not to the job itself, so the same license that let them take on a furnace repair last week covers this one. Arkansas is the one testing and keeping that record, and no county or city in the state can layer its own license rule on top of it, so the license you're shown is the whole answer here, not one piece of it.
For a furnace repair, that license is what stands behind the person working on your gas line and burner. A loose or misfit gas connection is the real danger in this job, and in Arkansas it's the state license, not a separate local check, that's meant to keep someone unqualified from being the one to make that connection.
Source: Arkansas Department of Labor and Licensing
- Why won't my furnace turn on?
- Most of the time it's the thermostat, the power to the unit, or a safety switch that's stopped the furnace from starting. Check that the thermostat is set to heat and above room temperature, and that the switch on the furnace itself, the one that looks like a light switch, is on. If the furnace has a standing pilot, check whether the pilot is lit. Beyond that, a clogged filter or a tripped breaker can shut the whole system down, and a licensed contractor can find which one it is.
- Why is my furnace blowing cold air?
- If air is moving but it's not warm, the furnace may be running the fan without the burners lighting, or the thermostat fan setting may be on instead of auto. Check the thermostat first. If the fan is set to auto and cold air is still coming through the vents, something is keeping the burners from firing, which could be the igniter, the flame sensor, or the gas supply. That's a repair for a licensed contractor, since it involves the gas and ignition side of the furnace.
- Why won't my furnace pilot light stay lit?
- A pilot light that won't stay lit is almost always a sign the thermocouple has worn out. The thermocouple sits in the pilot flame and tells the gas valve the flame is burning. Once it wears out, it can't hold that signal long enough and the gas valve shuts off the pilot. A draft blowing out the flame is possible too, but if it keeps happening, have a licensed contractor check the thermocouple before the next cold night from December through February, when a furnace with a bad pilot won't be able to keep up.