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It is nine at night and something has stopped
Five things that go wrong out of hours, crossed with the four kinds of building they go wrong in. Two of them are genuinely urgent and neither is a call to a heating contractor. The rest are a decision, and this is how we would make it.
Three things that apply to every answer below
- Two things are emergencies, and neither one is us
A smell of gas and a carbon monoxide alarm are the two, and in both cases the first move is out of the building and the second is a call to somebody who is not a heating contractor — the gas utility’s emergency number for gas, and 911 for a carbon monoxide alarm. Do not ring us first, do not wait for us, and do not go back in to investigate. We will come afterwards and deal with the appliance, which is the part that is actually ours.
- Everything else is a question about people, not about equipment
The equipment does not care what time it is. What decides whether something happens tonight is whether anybody in the building is at risk, whether anything in the building is at risk, and whether waiting will make the damage worse. Three questions, and we will ask them on the telephone before we quote anything.
- We do not publish a response time
Because nobody can promise one honestly. It depends on the day, on the traffic across the pass, and on what else has gone wrong that evening. What we will do is tell you on the phone when we can actually be there, and if that is not soon enough we will say so rather than let you wait.
Work out what happens tonight
Pick what has happened and pick what the building is. Every answer below is on this page whether you pick anything or not — the picker only narrows it down.
This is the answer we give most often and the one that costs us the most money, so it is worth putting plainly. An empty building has no comfort problem, because there is nobody in it to be uncomfortable. Unless something is actively causing damage — water running, or a gas or carbon monoxide situation, which are not comfort problems at all — the correct move is to switch the equipment off at the breaker or the disconnect, note the time, and ring us in the morning. What waiting until morning buys you: daylight to work in, which on a roof is a safety matter rather than a preference; parts counters that are open, so a repair can be finished rather than made temporary; and a rate that is not an out-of-hours rate. What it costs you: nothing, in an empty building. If you are not sure whether something is causing damage, ring anyway and describe it — that call is free and it takes two minutes, and we would rather talk you out of a call-out than take one we do not think you need.
Leave the building and call the gas utility from outside. Do not ring us first.
Everybody out, no light switches, no phones used inside, no attempt to find the source. The utility’s emergency line runs around the clock, they will attend, and it costs nothing. Shut the supply off at the meter only if you can do it on your way out without delay. Once you are outside, stay outside until they say otherwise.
What happens afterwards, and where we come in
The utility deals with the supply up to and including the meter, and will make the situation safe. What they will generally not do is repair your appliance or your internal pipework — that is a contractor’s work, and it is where we come in, the following day in almost every case.
If the utility has shut an appliance off or tagged it, leave it alone. We will want to see the tag, because it tells us what they found, and it is a much better starting point than a description over the phone.
One thing worth knowing in advance rather than at the time: where your shut-off is, and whether you have a wrench that fits it. Two minutes now, and it is the difference between being useful and being a spectator.
Get everybody outside into fresh air and call 911 from outside.
A carbon monoxide alarm is not a fault in the alarm until somebody qualified has established that it is. Get out, including anybody who says they feel fine, and call from outside. Do not open windows and go back in to investigate — ventilating the building makes it harder for responders to find the source and gives you a false result.
What we do the next day, and what we will not do
Once the building has been cleared, the mechanical investigation is ours and it is a real piece of work rather than a glance. Combustion analysis on every fuel-burning appliance, a heat exchanger inspection, the flue checked along its whole length for separation, blockage or back-drafting, and a check of whether anything in the building is depressurising the space the appliance is drawing air from — because a perfectly good furnace can spill when an extract fan is fighting it.
We will also check the alarms themselves: how many there are, where they are, and how old they are, since these devices have a service life and an expired one is worse than none because it is trusted.
What we will not do is tell you it was probably nothing. That sentence has killed people. If the investigation finds no source we will say that we found no source, which is a different statement and an honest one, and we will tell you what to do if it happens again.
Switch it off at the breaker and find out whether the water is coming from the unit or landing on it.
Those are two completely different problems and the difference decides whether anybody needs to come tonight. Water coming from the unit is almost always condensate — a blocked drain or a failed pump — and stops when the system stops. Water landing on the unit is a roof or a pipe, and switching the equipment off does not stop it.
What to do in the next ten minutes
- Switch the system off at the thermostat and at the breaker or disconnect. If it is condensate, this stops it.
- Put something under it and, if there is a ceiling below, get the water out of the ceiling rather than letting it spread.
- Look up. If water is still arriving with the system off, it is not condensate and a heating contractor is the wrong trade for tonight.
- Photograph it before anything is moved or dried, including where it is coming from. If an insurer is ever involved, this is the evidence that gets cleared away first.
Condensate overflow is one of the few genuinely common out-of-hours calls where attending can be worth it, because the damage is ongoing and the fix is frequently quick. We will tell you on the phone which of the two you have, from the answer to one question.
Establish whether the cold is a risk to anybody in the building. That decides tonight or tomorrow.
Cold is a real hazard for infants, for frail or elderly people, for anybody unwell, and for a building where pipes may freeze — which in this valley is a real possibility on a clear winter night. For a household of well adults with blankets, no heat is uncomfortable and it is not an emergency, and we will say so.
Three things worth checking before you ring anybody
- The thermostat. Batteries, mode, schedule, and whether somebody has set it to a hold. A surprising share of no-heat calls end here, and it is free to check.
- The breaker and the switch. A furnace generally has a switch beside it that looks like a light switch and gets turned off by accident. Check the breaker too.
- The filter. A completely blocked filter can trip a furnace on a high-limit safety and it will look like a failure. If it is black, change it and try again.
If none of those is it, we will take the details and tell you when we can be there. Where somebody in the building is genuinely at risk and we cannot get there soon enough, we will say so plainly and tell you what to do instead — including going somewhere warm, which is not the answer a contractor is supposed to give and is sometimes the right one.
What we will not do is bring a heater and call it a repair, or fit a replacement at eleven at night to a household that has had two hours to think about it.
Same question, plus one: is anything in the building temperature-sensitive?
Heat is a risk to the same people cold is, and more so — in a valley that holds its temperature overnight in August, a house without cooling and with somebody frail in it is a genuine call. A house of well adults with fans and open windows is not, and neither is an office at ten at night.
What to check, and what to do while you wait
- The filter and the outdoor unit. A blocked filter or a coil packed with dust and debris will cause exactly this, and both are visible without tools.
- Ice. If the line at the outdoor unit or the coil is iced up, switch the cooling off, leave the fan running, and let it thaw. Running it iced will damage the compressor, and no contractor can diagnose it frozen.
- The breaker, including the one at the outdoor unit, which is separate and is the one people forget.
- Close the house down for the day and open it at night. In this climate that is worth several degrees and costs nothing.
On the temperature-sensitive question: if the building holds anything with a specification — product, stock, a server room, laboratory material — that changes the answer and it changes it a lot. Say so when you ring, because it moves the job up the list ahead of comfort calls.
If somebody vulnerable is in the building
Then say so in the first sentence when you ring. It changes the order we do things in and it is the only thing that reliably does.
We will ask what the actual temperature in the room is rather than what the thermostat says, whether the person can be moved, and whether there is another room in the building that is habitable. Those three answers usually settle whether this is a tonight job or a first-thing-tomorrow job, and quite often the honest answer is that moving somebody to another room for one night is better and safer than waiting for a van.
Where it is a tonight job we will tell you when we can be there. Where we cannot be there soon enough, we will say so and tell you what else to do, including ringing somebody else. A contractor who keeps you waiting to protect the job is not helping you.
If it is a workplace, out of hours
Then the question is what time people arrive and what state the building will be in when they do. An office that loses cooling at nine on a Friday evening has the whole weekend; the same office at five on a Monday morning does not.
Where the building is occupied in the morning and the failure would make it unworkable, attending overnight can be exactly right — a repair finished at six is worth a great deal more than a repair started at ten. Where the building is empty until Monday, it is not, and we will say so.
One practical note for anybody managing a building: make sure whoever is on the phone at night knows where the isolators are, has access, and is authorised to approve a spend. More out-of-hours calls are wasted on access and authority than on diagnosis.
If stock or a process is at risk
Then the useful information is not that it is hot — it is the number. What temperature or humidity does the material actually require, where does that figure come from, and how long has it been outside it? A specification, a supplier’s document or an insurer’s requirement is worth ten times a general concern, and it decides everything about the response.
Practical measures while you wait are worth taking seriously. Move what can be moved into the coolest part of the building. Reduce anything generating heat. Shut the building down rather than opening it up, unless it is cooler outside. And log the temperature from now, with times, because if there is a claim afterwards that log is the whole case.
Where it is refrigeration rather than comfort cooling, that is not our trade and we will say so in the first minute rather than attend and discover it. Walk-ins, display cases and cold rooms need a refrigeration contractor and we will tell you that immediately.
If nobody is in the building
Read the note above, because it is the substance. The one qualification worth adding is about damage rather than comfort: water, gas and carbon monoxide are not comfort problems and an empty building does not make any of them wait.
The other case where an empty building still matters is freezing. A building left without heat on a clear cold night, with plumbing in an unheated space, can produce a burst pipe that costs many times what the heating repair would have. If the forecast is genuinely cold and the building has vulnerable pipework, say so — that is a real reason to attend and it has nothing to do with comfort.
Otherwise: off at the breaker, note the time, ring in the morning, and we will both be better off.
Where this page stops
We will take the call, ask the three questions, tell you honestly whether it is tonight, and tell you when we can actually be there. Where the answer is the morning we will say so, and where the answer is somebody other than us — the gas utility, 911, a roofer, a refrigeration contractor — we will say that instead, in the first minute, before anybody is billed for anything.
We do not publish a response time, do not attend gas leaks, do not work on roofs in the dark or in wind, and do not replace equipment out of hours. If you smell gas or a carbon monoxide alarm has sounded, stop reading this page, get out of the building and call from outside.