Background
Mike Kovacs has spent twenty years on residential service calls across the upper Midwest, first as an install apprentice on new-construction subdivisions and since 2011 running his own two-truck service outfit. He holds an EPA Section 608 Universal certification and a state gas-fitting license, and he has replaced enough hot-surface ignitors on 15-degree mornings to have strong opinions about which brands last. He writes the diagnostic sequences on this site the way he teaches them to new techs: symptom first, cheapest and most likely cause first, and an honest line about where a homeowner should stop and pick up the phone. Pricing in his articles comes from his own invoice history plus quotes collected from contractors in eight metro markets, refreshed every year. When a repair is not worth doing, he says so.