Furnace Repair in Winona, MN
Furnaces here run from October through May. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Winona County will get in touch.
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Eight months of Winona winter wears on a furnace
Your furnace runs from October through May here, eight months of the year. On winter nights that average 11 degrees, it has to run longer and more often to keep the house warm, and the parts that start the burner take the wear. An igniter or flame sensor that has been through a few of those winters is the kind that fails.
Winona County has seen 30 winter storms and 63 damaging wind events over the past ten years. Storms like that knock out power, and across Minnesota 13 percent of households lost power for 24 hours or more in 2024. A furnace needs electricity to run even when it burns gas, so an outage in weather like this means no heat until the power is back.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 11°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 55%
- of homes here heat with gas, so most furnaces here burn gas
- 30 winter storms
- in ten years, the nights a failure hurts most
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A new furnace would cut about $120 a year off heating for a typical Winona County home.
Estimates for a typical Winona County home, compared with an older unit built to the previous federal minimum, from EIA household energy data, Minnesota fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
Repair makes sense when one part has failed and the heat exchanger is sound.
Replacement makes sense when the heat exchanger is cracked or the furnace keeps needing parts.
Minnesota has no state license for HVAC contractors.
Minnesota keeps no state list of HVAC contractors and tests no one before they work on your furnace. There's no license number to check and no state board that recorded this contractor's name before today. Whatever confidence you have in the person coming to your house has to come from somewhere other than the state of Minnesota, because the state isn't in this at all.
In Winona County, 55.4% of homes heat with gas, and a furnace repair on a gas system comes down to the gas connection itself. That is the part that has to be done right. Minnesota has no board checking that work and no registration standing behind the person doing it. That is true of this repair the same as any other in the state.
Source: Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes
- Why won't my furnace turn on?
- Check the thermostat first. If it's set to heat and the temperature is calling for it but nothing happens, the problem is likely the power supply, the igniter, or the flame sensor. A tripped breaker or a blown fuse on the furnace's control board will also keep it from starting at all. If the switch on the furnace itself or the one that looks like a light switch nearby got bumped off, that alone will stop it cold. Given how many hours a day your furnace needs to run through a Winona winter, it's worth having a contractor check it out as soon as it stops responding.
- Why is my furnace blowing cold air?
- Most of the time this means the blower is running but the burners aren't lighting. A dirty flame sensor, a bad igniter, or a clogged filter restricting airflow can all cause this. It can also happen for a few minutes right after the furnace starts, before the heat exchanger warms up, which is normal. If cold air keeps coming and never turns warm, the burners aren't firing and the furnace needs a look before the next cold night.
- Why won't my furnace pilot light stay lit?
- A pilot light that won't stay lit is almost always the thermocouple, the small sensor that tells the gas valve the flame is present. When it wears out or sits out of position, the gas valve shuts off the pilot as a safety measure. A draft blowing across the pilot or a dirty pilot orifice can cause the same thing. Either way, this is a gas component, and a contractor should be the one to relight it and fix what's causing it to go out.