No Heat Emergency Service in Rhode Island

Before you call: two minutes that might save you the call

We would rather you fix it yourself than pay us to flip a switch, so check these first. If none of them is it, call, and tell us what you found.

• Thermostat: set to heat, set above room temperature, batteries not dead, schedule not holding it low
• The emergency switch: a red switch plate, often at the top of the basement stairs, that gets knocked off more often than anyone admits
• The breaker for the boiler, and the service switch on the boiler itself
• Oil: if you are on oil, check the gauge; a tank that reads low may be empty
• Lockout light: if the boiler shows a fault or lockout, you may reset it once. If it locks out again, leave it off and call. Repeated resets can hide a dangerous combustion fault and make the eventual repair worse.

What we find on most no-heat calls

The majority of no-heat calls are a single failed part, fixed on the first visit from the stock on the van:

• Ignition: a failed thermocouple, igniter or flame sensor, the most common cause on gas
• A frozen condensate line on a high-efficiency boiler, which drains outside and freezes in exactly the weather you need heat, shutting the unit down until it thaws
• Circulator pump seized or failed, so the boiler fires and the heat never leaves the basement
• Aquastat, low water cutoff or high limit tripped or failed, the controls that are supposed to protect the boiler doing their job for the wrong reason
• Zone valves and air: one zone cold while the rest of the house is fine is a valve or an air lock, not a boiler
• Out of oil, or an oil line that has gelled in the cold

How the call goes

A real person answers, at any hour, and asks what you found in the checks above. The nearest stocked van is dispatched, and you are told the emergency rate on the phone before it moves, so the price is never a surprise on arrival. There are no overtime charges. The technician diagnoses with instruments rather than by swapping parts until something works, fixes what has failed, and runs the system through a full cycle before leaving.

Protecting the house while you wait

Open the cabinet doors under sinks on outside walls and let a faucet run at a trickle, because the real cost of a no-heat night is not the cold, it is the pipe that freezes in the wall. Space heaters are fine on their own circuit and away from anything that burns. Know where the main water shutoff is before you need it. If a pipe does freeze or burst, that is a second emergency and we handle it on the same visit.

When the fix is a new boiler

Sometimes the no-heat call is the boiler's last one. If the block is cracked or the unit is not worth what it would cost to save, we say so in the basement, talk through temporary heat, and move to a replacement on the fastest honest schedule. Financing is available, so a decision made on a cold night does not have to be made on the cheapest option.

Members first

During peak heating season, maintenance plan members are scheduled ahead of non-members. When the whole state is calling in the same cold snap, that is the difference between tonight and tomorrow. The annual service the plan includes is also the reason most members are not making this call at all.