Furnace will not restart after the outage
The pattern from every North Texas ice event, February 2021 included: power returns, half the furnaces in the neighborhood do not. Most of them are not broken. In order:
- Thermostat. A power blink resets some thermostats to a schedule or to OFF; battery-backed ones may be dead. Set HEAT, setpoint well above room temperature.
- Breaker and furnace switch. A furnace on a tripped breaker or a switch someone flipped during the outage does nothing. Reset once.
- Lockout. Boards that tried to light during a brownout and failed lock out for an hour. Power off at the switch for 30 seconds, back on, wait. Three failed attempts and it locks again — that is a real fault.
- Frozen intake or flue. High-efficiency furnaces vent in PVC through a side wall. Ice or snow over the intake or exhaust stops the pressure switch from proving. Clear it from outside.
- Frozen condensate line. Same furnaces: a trap or drain line routed through an unheated garage freezes, the furnace locks out on pressure. Thaw it; then ask the tech to reroute or heat-trace it.
- Gas supply. If the pilot or ignitor works but nothing lights and other gas appliances are also dead, it is the supply, not the furnace. Atmos Energy, not an HVAC contractor.
Then the normal fault list, Dallas order
Leave the house
Gas smell that persists, hissing at a connection, or a carbon monoxide alarm. Everyone out, then Atmos Energy's emergency line or 911 from outside. CO from a cracked heat exchanger has no smell; headache and nausea in several people at once is the sign.
Shut it off, call today
- Flame rollout. Flame outside the burner box, soot on the cabinet, a rollout switch that tripped. Blocked exchanger or flue. Do not keep resetting it.
- Repeated lockouts. Lights, runs, dies; three to five tries; an hour of nothing. A safety is doing its job.
- Electrical or plastic smell that does not clear. A motor, board or wire cooking. Dust burn-off stops in twenty minutes; this does not.
Call this week
- Ignitor cracked. Inducer runs, click, no flame. Dallas furnaces sit eight months; the first heat cycle of November is when the ceramic goes.
- Flame sensor oxidized. Lights and dies in seconds. Cleaning usually fixes it.
- Short cycling on a limit. A filter loaded with a full cooling season of oak and cottonwood, or an attic return blocked by holiday storage. Frisco and McKinney attics are full of both.
- Heat pump quietly on strips. Newer Grand Prairie, Arlington and Frisco homes with heat pumps: the outdoor unit failed or lost charge, the strips took over, the bill doubled, nobody noticed until January.
- Blower or inducer bearings. Squeal on start. Not dangerous today; expensive next month.
Two kinds of Dallas winter
Dallas averages just under 2,000 heating degree days a year (NOAA normals, climate zone 3A) — the most of the five metros, and the only one where the furnace does real work for three months. Most winters are mild with a few hard freezes. Every few years an Arctic outbreak parks over North Texas for days: February 2021 brought single digits, and February 2011 and December 2022 brought ice. Those weeks are when a furnace that has been marginal all season fails, and when every contractor in DFW is running eighteen-hour days. Calls also spike on the first cold night of November, from furnaces nobody ran since March.
Almost every Dallas home built before 2010 heats with a gas furnace on Atmos Energy gas, paired with the central AC. Heat pumps are common in newer subdivisions and in all-electric neighborhoods in Arlington, Grand Prairie and Garland, and the dual-fuel arrangement — heat pump above about 35°F, furnace below — is a genuinely good fit for this climate.
Where in DFW
Dallas County is the core: Dallas, Irving, Garland, Richardson, Carrollton and Grand Prairie. The network runs north through Plano, Frisco and McKinney in Collin County and west through Arlington to Fort Worth in Tarrant County. Lakewood, Oak Cliff, the Park Cities and the M Streets inside Dallas; Las Colinas; the new construction along the North Tollway and US-380 — all in coverage.
The housing age matters for the fault. 1950s–70s homes in Lakewood, Oak Cliff, older Richardson and Garland often run a closet or hall furnace with a metal flue and a 40-year-old duct system; heat exchangers on those are the CO risk. 1995-onward suburban stock in Frisco, McKinney, Plano and Grand Prairie has attic furnaces, usually high-efficiency with PVC venting and the frozen-condensate problem above.
Dallas furnace repair costs
Dallas labor is at the low end of the five metros. Storm-week emergency calls carry a premium; a scheduled October visit does not.
- Diagnosticusually credited toward the repair
- $75–$140
- Flame sensorclean or replace
- $80–$230
- Hot surface ignitor
- $140–$340
- Condensate line thaw and reroutehigh-efficiency furnaces
- $120–$380
- Pressure switch or limit switch
- $140–$330
- Inducer motor
- $380–$880
- Blower motorECM at the top of the range
- $380–$1,150
- Control board
- $380–$980
- Gas valve
- $280–$680
- Heat exchangerpast 12–15 years, compare with replacement
- $1,400–$3,300
Every storm-week call above is cheaper in October. What a fall furnace check in Dallas includes — combustion analysis, exchanger inspection, condensate routing — and what it costs. The full urgency-ranked list for any metro is on the furnace repair page. Winter storm outlooks: National Weather Service Fort Worth/Dallas.