Heating
Heating and furnace service
Houston heating equipment spends most of the year idle and then gets asked to perform during a hard freeze. That pattern is exactly why it fails when it matters.
The Houston heating problem
Equipment that idles for ten months then gets tested hard
Houston needs very little heating in a normal year. That sounds like an advantage and in running-cost terms it is. In reliability terms it is the opposite.
A furnace that sits unused from March to November accumulates dust on the heat exchanger, gets damp in a humid attic, and has ignition components, flame sensors and pressure switches that have not moved in eight months. Nothing about that idleness is good for it. The first cold snap is often the first time anybody discovers a fault that has been sitting there since spring.
Then there are freeze events. When one arrives, the entire metro asks for heat simultaneously, every HVAC company’s schedule fills within hours, and parts availability becomes the constraint. A furnace fault that would be a same-day fix in October becomes a multi-day wait in January.
The practical conclusion is simple and worth acting on. Test the heat before you need it, and get anything odd looked at while there is still slack in the system.
Worth knowing before you call
- Whether it is gas, electric or a heat pump, if you know
- Whether the blower runs but the air is cold, or nothing runs at all
- Any smell, and what kind
- Whether a breaker has tripped or a gas valve has been touched
- When the system was last serviced
24/7 emergency HVAC service. Office monday - saturday, 9:00am - 6:00pm.
Heating work
What we handle
Furnace repair
Ignition faults, flame sensors, pressure switches, blower problems and control board failures on gas furnaces.
Heat pump service
Reversing valves, defrost control and supplementary heat strips. Heat pumps are efficient here but have more to go wrong than a straight cool system.
Safety checks
Heat exchanger inspection, venting and combustion air. This is the part of heating work where getting it right actually matters for safety.
Replacement
Furnace or heat pump replacement, usually done alongside the cooling side since the indoor equipment is shared.
Electric heat
Heat strips and their circuits, which draw heavily and are a common source of tripped breakers during a cold snap.
Freeze-event response
Emergency service runs 24/7 through freeze events, when demand across the metro spikes at once.
Safety
When to stop and call rather than investigate
Most heating faults are inconvenient rather than dangerous. A few are not, and the distinction is worth knowing.
- Any smell of gas. Leave the house, then call the gas utility from outside before anyone else
- A carbon monoxide alarm sounding. Get everyone out and call emergency services
- Soot around the furnace, or a burner flame that is yellow and lazy rather than blue and stable
- A persistent burning or electrical smell beyond the first-run dust burn-off
- A breaker that trips every time the heat calls
Every house with gas appliances should have working carbon monoxide alarms, and that is worth checking now rather than in December.
The autumn checklist
- Run the heat for twenty minutes on a mild day
- Confirm it produces genuinely warm air at the registers
- Listen for anything new: rattles, booms on ignition, repeated clicking
- Change the filter, since heating and cooling share it
- Test carbon monoxide alarms and replace batteries
- Get anything unusual looked at before the first freeze warning
Related pages
HVAC maintenance
The pre-winter visit that catches most of this in advance.
AC repair
The cooling side, which shares the same indoor equipment and duct.
Plumbing
The other thing that fails in a Texas freeze, often at the same time.
AC replacement
Furnace and cooling replacement usually happen together.
Emergency service
24/7 cover, which matters during freeze events too.
Mini-splits
Heat pump heads that heat and cool a single space.
Heating questions
My heat has not been used since last winter. Should I test it?
Why does my furnace smell when it first comes on?
What is the difference between a furnace and a heat pump?
Do I need to worry about freeze damage?
Testing the heat in autumn is free. Finding out it does not work during a freeze is not.
Call (866) 427-9264Test the heat before the first freeze warning
When a freeze event arrives, every schedule in the metro fills within hours. October is a far better time to find a fault than January.