Oil and gas heating, boilers and radiators, central air and heat pumps — and the ductwork that decides whether any of it reaches the room you are in.
Nothing is happening
A heating system that will not run is diagnosed from the cheap end. The order below is the order we work in and it is deliberate.
Power and controls
Breaker, the service switch at the top of the basement stairs, the emergency switch, the thermostat and its batteries. A genuine share of first-cold-night calls end here and we say so.
Filter and airflow
A blocked filter trips the limit switch: the furnace lights, heats, shuts down and locks out. It reads exactly like a failure and it costs nothing to rule out.
Ignition and sensing
Igniter, flame sensor, pressure switch, and on an oil burner the nozzle, electrodes and cad cell. Most genuine faults are here and most are not expensive.
Circulators and zones
On a boiler, a zone that is cold when the others are warm is usually a circulator, a zone valve or an air lock — not the boiler. This gets checked before anything is condemned.
Valve and board
Checked last because they fail least and cost most. If we get there, you see the reading that proves it before anything is ordered.
Heat exchanger
Inspected on every no-heat call whatever the fault turned out to be. A cracked exchanger ends the visit — the appliance is shut off and tagged, and no repair is attempted.
Gas, or a carbon monoxide alarm
Do not ring a contractor first. Get everybody out of the house and, from outside, call 911 and your gas utility’s emergency line. They arrive faster than any contractor, they do not charge you for a false alarm, and making the property safe is their job. Ring us afterwards — finding out why it happened is ours.
The uneven house
More than half of what we are called about in Huntington. Almost none of it is a broken machine.
What it usually turns out to be
- Ducts in the attic, losing air and picking up heat before they reach the bedrooms. In a Huntington cape or colonial with a finished second floor this is the first suspect in summer.
- A return that is too small. Almost every uneven house we measure has more supply than return. Air that cannot get back cannot be pushed forward.
- A branch added during a remodel off a trunk that had nothing spare, usually when a garage or an attic became a room.
- A damper somebody closed years ago and nobody remembers. These are free to fix and they are found by looking.
- Insulation and air sealing — the room is not losing the fight against the system, it is losing it against the roof.
How we settle it
With a manometer and an anemometer, not with an opinion. We measure total static pressure across the system, then airflow at the register that is wrong and at a register that is fine.
That produces two numbers and a comparison, and it almost always identifies which of the five causes above is the real one — often before anything is opened up.
It also tells you whether zoning would work. Zoning divides the air you have; if you do not have enough air, dividing it changes nothing except the bill.
Oil, gas and heat pumps
This part of Suffolk County has all three, often in the same street, and the right answer is not the same in every house.
Oil
Burner service, nozzle and electrode changes, combustion testing, and boiler and furnace work. Tank testing, tank removal and anything to do with a leak are specialist work and we will tell you to get a tank specialist rather than doing it ourselves.
Gas
Furnaces and boilers, combustion tested with an analyser and the readings written down. Where a conversion is being discussed, the venting and the chimney are part of the conversation from the start rather than a surprise afterwards.
Heat pumps
Installed, serviced and repaired — and assessed honestly. A heat pump in a house with leaking attic ducts and an undersized return will disappoint, and we would rather say that before it goes in than afterwards.
Replacement quotes
Built from a room-by-room heat loss calculation, the measured capacity of the existing ducts, the venting, and the electrical supply read off the plate of the proposed unit. Not from the rating on the old one — equipment fitted before about 2000 was routinely far too big, and matching it just repeats the mistake with a better warranty.