The independent heating and cooling company across Hampton Roads and coastal Virginia
CO Alarm Sounding
Your carbon monoxide alarm is going off and you need to know what to do right now. Get everyone out of the house, then call 911 or your gas utility from outside. Do not stop to hunt for the cause. Once the fire department or the utility has cleared the house, call us and we will inspect the heating equipment that may have caused it.
Call (888) 381-2953- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quote before work starts
Taking calls until 5:00 PM ET
By our service team · vetted by the techs who do this daily
The First Five Minutes, In Order
1. Get every person and pet outside into fresh air. Open the door you leave by and keep going. 2. Do a headcount on the sidewalk or in the driveway. 3. From outside, call 911 or your gas utility's emergency line. Both will come out and both will take it seriously. 4. Stay outside until they tell you the house is safe to enter, even if the alarm stops sounding. 5. If anyone has a headache, nausea, dizziness, confusion or blurred vision, tell the dispatcher. Those are carbon monoxide symptoms and they need medical attention, not fresh air alone.
What Not To Do
Do not open windows and go back to bed. Airing the house out hides the reading the responders need and does nothing about the source. Do not try to find the leak yourself. Do not light a match, flip light switches, or use a lighter if you also smell gas. Do not restart the furnace or boiler to test whether it was the culprit. Do not pull the batteries out of the alarm to quiet it. And do not assume a single chirp means a low battery. Treat every sounding alarm as real until someone with a meter tells you otherwise.
Where Carbon Monoxide Usually Comes From
Carbon monoxide comes from anything that burns fuel. In most homes across the region that means a gas or oil furnace, a boiler, a gas water heater, a fireplace, or a vehicle left running in an attached garage. The common failure is a venting problem. A cracked heat exchanger, a rusted flue pipe, a blocked chimney, a bird nest in a vent cap, or a flue that got knocked loose during other work. Homes with crawlspaces and tight modern sealing show it faster because there is less air moving through. Backdrafting during a storm can also push exhaust back inside.
When To Call Us
Call us after the fire department or the gas utility has been out and the house is safe to occupy. We service gas and oil heating equipment across Washington DC, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, and a combustion inspection is the next step. We check the heat exchanger for cracks, test draft at the flue, look at the vent run end to end, and check combustion at the burner. If the equipment is unsafe, we say so plainly and tell you what it takes to make it safe. Sometimes that is a repair. Sometimes it is a replacement.
Keeping It From Happening Again
Put a carbon monoxide alarm on every level of the house and outside each sleeping area. Test them monthly and replace the whole unit on the schedule printed on the back, because the sensors wear out even when the battery is fine. Have your heating system checked before each heating season so a cracked heat exchanger or a failing flue gets caught while the equipment is off. Keep the outdoor vent terminations clear of leaves, snow and nesting birds. Never run a generator, grill or kerosene heater in a garage, crawlspace or screened porch, and never use a range for heat.
CO Alarm Sounding — what people ask
My alarm sounded once and stopped. Do I still need to worry?
Yes. A single sound can mean a short burst of carbon monoxide from a backdrafting flue. Get everyone out, call 911 or the gas utility, and have the heating equipment inspected afterward even if nothing else happens.
Can I turn my heat back on while I wait?
No. Leave the system off and leave it off until the responders clear the house and the heating equipment has been inspected. Restarting it can put more carbon monoxide into the air while people are inside.
How do I know if it was the furnace or something else?
You do not, and you should not guess. Responders measure levels and locate the source. After that, we test the furnace or boiler, the heat exchanger and the venting to confirm whether the heating equipment was involved.
How it works
- Step 1
Tell us the symptom
Call or fill in the quote form. We ask what changed, when it started, and what the thermostat reads against the actual room temperature. That short conversation tells us what parts to load on the truck.
- Step 2
We diagnose on site
A technician checks the thermostat, the electrical side, airflow through the filter and coil, refrigerant behaviour and the outdoor unit. You get a plain explanation of what failed and why, before any work starts.
- Step 3
Repair and verify
We make the repair, then run the system through a full cycle and measure temperatures at the supply and return. If something upstream caused the failure, we tell you so it does not repeat.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quote before work starts
Why homeowners call us
- We know salt airCoastal homes lose condenser coils to salt corrosion years before inland systems do. We look for fin damage and pitted line sets on every visit, because a clean-looking unit can still be shedding capacity from the outside in.
- Humidity is part of the jobHurricane-season air loads a system in ways a temperature reading will not show. If your house feels clammy at 74 degrees, we look at run times, airflow and drainage rather than just adding refrigerant and leaving.
- Crawlspace realitiesHigh water tables mean wet ground under ductwork, rusted plenums and condensate lines with nowhere good to drain. We check what is happening under the floor, since that is often where comfort problems actually begin.
- Straight answersWe tell you what failed, what it will take to fix, and whether a repair makes sense on an older system. No pressure to replace something that has honest years left in it, and no vague diagnosis.
- All major brands, gas & electricIndependent service on Carrier, Trane, Lennox, Goodman, York and the rest.
- Straight answersWhen a replacement beats a repair, we tell you, sometimes before we roll a truck.
About this guide
If the safe checks didn't fix it, the fault is real
Mention which checks you ran when you book; it speeds up the visit.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quotes
- All major brands
- Gas & electric
Rather not call? Get a free quote →