Residential, Heating
Heating repair for the two or three weeks a year you actually need it
Gulf Coast heating sits idle most of the year, then gets asked to work hard on the coldest night of the season, usually right when every other system in Tomball is asking the same thing.
Why heat fails hardest on the coldest night
Nine months a year the heating side of your system does nothing. It sits in the attic or the closet while the AC runs the whole show, then a cold front finally comes through and asks it to fire on the coldest night of the winter, at the exact moment every other furnace and heat pump in the area is being asked the same thing. That combination, long idle time followed by sudden hard use, is what makes gas furnaces and heat pumps fail. A burnt-dust smell in the first few minutes of the first cold snap is usually just dust that settled on the heat exchanger over the summer, burning off, and it should fade within a few minutes. A smell that lingers, or smoke, is not normal and is worth a call. Ignitors and flame sensors are the two parts we replace most on gas furnaces, and both fail quietly, so what you notice is a system that tries to light and gives up rather than throwing an obvious fault. Heat pumps run defrost cycles that can look alarming, blowing cool air outside or seeming to steam, but that is the outdoor coil clearing ice off itself and is normal operation, not a breakdown. Short-cycling, turning on and off in quick bursts, is worth a call no matter the cause.
What an after-hours heating call actually looks like
One customer's air handling unit went down on a 23 degree Tomball morning. Chris was on site within the hour, walked through the diagnostics, and found the real fault was the thermostat rather than the furnace itself. On a separate after-hours call, two of our technicians, Daniel and Nate, arrived the next morning and traced a dead unit to a faulty switch, replaced it and tested the system before they left. Both calls came in outside the posted Monday to Friday office hours, because after-hours emergency service is a real part of how this company runs.
Steadfast AC, Licensed by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, TACLA166258C. Call (713) 303-4552.
Before the first cold front
Four things worth knowing before the coldest night of the year
The burnt-dust smell
Normal for the first few minutes of the season, as dust on the heat exchanger burns off. A smell that lingers, or smoke, is not normal.
Ignitors and flame sensors
The two parts that fail most often on a gas furnace, and both fail quietly: the system tries to light and gives up rather than throwing an obvious fault.
Defrost cycles on a heat pump
Cool air, or what looks like steam, coming off the outdoor unit is usually the coil clearing ice off itself, not a breakdown.
Short-cycling
On and off in quick bursts is worth a call no matter what is causing it. It wears the system harder than running steady does.
The honest fix for most of this is testing the heating side of your system in October, before the cold front, rather than finding out at eleven at night in January. Testing heat is part of a normal AC maintenance visit. If your winter complaint is really about a house that feels damp and uncomfortable rather than one that will not heat, that is usually an indoor air quality question, not a heating one. See everything we cover on our services page, or send us the details and we'll call you back.