The winter questions come first here, because winter does
The furnace died in the middle of the night at twenty below. What do we do before anyone can get here? Protect the pipes and the people, in that order of urgency. Keep cabinet doors open under sinks on outside walls, let a faucet at the far end of the house drip if the temperature indoors is falling steadily, and know where your main water shutoff is; if the indoor temperature is sliding toward the forties and no repair is close, shutting the water off and draining the lines at the lowest faucet converts a burst pipe into a dry inconvenience. Space heaters belong only in rooms where someone awake is sharing them. Then call Call for same-day help and say the house's temperature and who is in it: Renee's board sorts cold snap calls by exactly that, and the information moves real trucks.
Our furnace quits on the coldest nights and runs fine by noon. Is it haunted? It is confessing. In a high-efficiency furnace that rhythm usually means the cold is closing one of two small passages: the condensate line freezing where it crosses a cold space, or hoarfrost narrowing the intake pipe during the long overnight runs. Mild midday air thaws both, the furnace forgives, and the cycle repeats the next cold night. The repair is usually in the routing and insulation of those pipes. The heating repair page explains the whole mechanism.
Half our radiators are hot and half are lukewarm. Is the boiler dying? Boilers almost never die by halves. Uneven radiators report distribution trouble: air trapped high in the system, a zone valve stuck partway, a circulator losing strength, or pressure sagging until the top floor stops being reached. Each cause is a component with its own figure. Describe which rooms cooled first when you call; in a radiator house that sequence is the cheapest diagnostic evidence there is.
The new house feels stale all winter and the windows sweat. Is that the furnace? Usually it is the other box: the air exchanger. Tight newer construction breathes through a heat recovery ventilator, and in a long cold run its core can frost, stall, or drip, and the house reports it as stale air and sweating glass. The exchanger is half the ventilation a tight house has, and in January it gets the same standing as the furnace on this crew's calls.
Do cold-climate heat pumps actually work here, and do you repair them? They work, within an honest limit: below a balance point the supplemental heat carries a growing share, which is the design, not a failure. We repair them, and their common failures are controls and changeover parts: defrost boards that steam the coil on a timer instead of on need, reversing valves that hesitate, thermostats left in the emergency setting after a snap. A doubled January electric bill against last year's weather is the symptom worth reporting when you call.
Do you clean ducts, dryer vents, or furnaces? No, and the refusal is principled rather than lazy. Cleaning is a real trade with its own companies, several of them good, and a repair crew selling cleaning is selling work its own trade does not stand behind. If cleaning is what your system actually needs, we will tell you that and send you to the people whose trade it is.
How fast can someone get here during a cold snap? Honestly: it depends on the snap and on your house's position in it, and anyone who promises you a time in the season's coldest week is guessing at your expense. In an ordinary week, most calls are reached the day they come in. In a deep cold stretch the board turns into a triage sheet: the fastest-cooling houses and the houses with babies, elders, or medical equipment go first, every caller hears where their call stands, and a house holding its temperature may wait longer than it would in October. That ordering is this company's own conduct, run by the person who answers your call.
What will the repair cost? The service pages carry typical planning ranges for the common work, framed as what they are: planning numbers, not quotes. What yours costs turns on your house, your equipment, and how hard both are to reach; it comes out of your own diagnosis, named part first, and is confirmed with you before any work begins. The estimate itself is free, hassle-free, and no-obligation.
Still holding a question the seasons have not asked yet? Call Call for same-day help, Mon-Sat 7am-7pm, or email [email protected].