Homeowners' pick for heating and cooling across Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic
Your CO Alarm Went Off
Your carbon monoxide alarm is sounding and you are standing in the hallway trying to decide if it is real. Treat it as real. Get everyone outside, then call 911 or your gas utility from outside. Once the building has been cleared and checked, we can look at the heating equipment that caused it. Here is the order to do things in.
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Written by the James River Heating & Air service team and checked by our field technicians
The first five minutes, in order
1. Get every person and pet out of the building. Do not stop to gather things, and do not go looking for the source. 2. Leave the door open behind you if you can do it without delay. 3. From outside, call 911 or your gas utility's emergency line. Both will send someone. 4. Stay outside, well away from the structure, until they tell you it is safe to go back in. 5. If anyone has a headache, nausea, dizziness, confusion or is unusually sleepy, say so on the call. Those symptoms change how the responders treat it. Only after the building is cleared do you start thinking about repairs.
What not to do
Do not open windows to "air it out" before you leave. It can lower the reading enough that responders find nothing while the source keeps running. Do not pull the battery to stop the noise and go back to bed. Do not light anything, and do not run the furnace, water heater or any gas equipment to test it. Do not open up a furnace cabinet, poke at a burner, or take apart a flue pipe. Carbon monoxide comes from combustion that is going wrong, and finding out where takes instruments, not guesses. If you smell gas along with the alarm, that is the same response: out of the building first, then call 911 or the gas utility.
Where carbon monoxide usually comes from
Any equipment that burns fuel can produce it: gas or oil furnaces, boilers, gas water heaters, gas ranges, wall and space heaters, fireplaces, and a car left running in an attached garage. The trouble is almost always with combustion or with venting. A cracked heat exchanger, a blocked or disconnected flue, a bird nest or debris in a vent terminal, a rusted-through pipe, or not enough combustion air in a tight basement. In older homes across the region we also see negative pressure pulling exhaust back down a flue, especially in the damp shoulder seasons when systems short cycle. None of that is visible from the thermostat.
When to call us, and what we do
Call us after the fire department or gas utility has cleared the building and shut down whatever they found. We handle heating repair on gas and oil furnaces, boilers and heat pumps with gas backup for homeowners across Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina and Washington DC. On arrival we test combustion, check the heat exchanger, inspect the flue and vent terminal end to end, verify draft, and confirm the equipment has the combustion air it needs. If a heat exchanger is cracked, we tell you plainly and go over repair against replacement. If a utility red tagged your furnace, keep it off until we have been out.
Keeping it from happening again
Put a carbon monoxide alarm on every level and outside each sleeping area, and test them on a schedule you will actually keep. Alarms age out, usually somewhere between seven and ten years, and there is a date printed on the back. Replace them then, not when they start chirping. Have fuel-burning heating equipment checked before each heating season, and mention it if you have noticed soot marks, a yellow burner flame instead of blue, or a stuffy smell when the heat runs. Keep vent terminals clear of snow, leaves and mulch. Change the filter, since a starved blower makes a furnace run hot and short cycle.
Your CO Alarm Went Off — straight answers
My alarm went off once and then stopped. Do I still need to do anything?
Yes. A single alarm that clears usually means carbon monoxide was present and then dispersed. The source is still there. Leave, call the gas utility to check, then have us test the combustion equipment.
Can a heat pump or AC produce carbon monoxide?
No. Electric heat pumps and air conditioning equipment do not burn fuel. If you have a gas furnace as backup heat, that furnace can produce carbon monoxide, and so can a gas water heater sharing the same flue.
Should I shut off my furnace before I leave the house?
Only if the switch is right there and it costs you no time. Getting people out comes first. Tell the responders which equipment was running and let them shut down what needs shutting down.
How it works
- Step 1
Tell us the symptom
Call or fill in the form and describe what changed. Warm air, short cycling, a smell, water near the indoor unit. Details like that help us load the right parts before we leave.
- Step 2
We diagnose the whole system
We check the thermostat, the indoor unit, the outdoor unit and the ductwork, including runs in crawlspaces where damp air and loose joints quietly cause weak airflow and long run times.
- Step 3
You approve the fix
We explain what failed, what it takes to repair it, and what we would watch next season. Nothing gets replaced without your yes, and we clean up before we leave.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quote before work starts
Why homeowners call us
- Humidity is our home groundMuggy summers and damp shoulder seasons drive most of the calls we take. We look at moisture and airflow together, not the cooling number alone, because a clammy house often means a sizing or duct problem.
- Crawlspace ducts get checkedOlder homes across the region run supply ducts through vented crawlspaces. Crushed flex, disconnected boots and soaked insulation show up constantly, and we get under the house to look instead of guessing from the register.
- Heating and cooling bothSame crew for air conditioning repair in July and heating repair in January. We know how your furnace, heat pump and air handler share ducts and a blower, so one visit covers the whole system.
- Plain talk on repair or replaceWhen a repair makes sense, we repair it. When a system is failing in ways that will keep costing you, we say so and explain why, then leave the decision with you and your timeline.
- All major brands, gas & electricCarrier, Trane, Lennox, Goodman, Rheem, York and more, as an independent company.
- Straight answersIf a system is not worth repairing, we say so, often right on the phone.
About this guide
Checked everything on the list and it still acts up?
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- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quotes
- All major brands
- Gas & electric
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