Emergency AC and Heating Repair in the Sacramento Area
Call first if any of this is happening
Some of these are not HVAC calls at all, and we would rather you know that before you dial us.
- You smell gas anywhere in the house. Leave the building, take everyone with you, and call PG&E at 1-800-743-5000 or 911 from outside. Do not flip switches, do not open the garage door opener, do not look for the leak. Call us after the gas company has cleared the house.
- Your carbon monoxide alarm is sounding. Open doors, get everyone outside, call 911. A CO alarm is a medical situation before it is a furnace problem.
- You see smoke, sparks, or flame outside the burner compartment. Shut the system off at the breaker if you can reach it safely, then call us.
- No cooling and it is over 100 degrees with someone vulnerable in the house. An infant, an elderly parent, anyone on oxygen or with a heart condition. Tell us that when you call. It changes where you go in the queue.
- Water is running out of the air handler into the ceiling. Shut the system off and put a bucket under it. Ceiling damage gets expensive faster than the repair does.
What counts as an emergency in Sacramento, and what can wait until morning
We are straight with people about this because calling a technician out at 11pm for something that can wait costs you money and gets you a worse repair. Nobody diagnoses a refrigerant leak well by flashlight.
A July afternoon here runs 100 to 108 degrees, and the valley holds that heat well past sunset. A house with no cooling does not cool off overnight the way it does in the Bay Area. Indoor temperatures of 90 and above are routine within a few hours of the system quitting. That is a real emergency, especially in the older Arden-Arcade and Carmichael homes where the attic ductwork dumps heat into the living space.
Winter is different. Overnight lows sit in the high 30s and low 40s most of the season. Losing heat is miserable and it needs fixing quickly, but it is rarely dangerous in the way losing cooling in August is. If your furnace quits at 10pm in January and the house is at 62, you are usually better served by a first-thing-in-the-morning appointment than by an overnight visit.
Things that almost always wait until morning:
- One room that is warmer or cooler than the rest
- A system that is running but not as cold or as warm as it used to be
- A noise that is new but the system still works
- A thermostat screen that has gone blank while the weather is mild
What happens when you call
You get a person, not a form. We ask what the system is doing, what it was doing before it stopped, and whether anyone in the house needs cooling for health reasons. Then we tell you one of three things: we can be there tonight, we can be there first thing tomorrow, or this is something you can safely try yourself in the next ten minutes.
That last one happens more often than you would think. A tripped breaker, a float switch that tripped on a clogged drain, a thermostat someone set to ON instead of AUTO, a furnace door that is not latched so the door switch never closes. We walk people through those over the phone and charge nothing for it. We would rather have the review than the invoice.
What emergency service costs
Our diagnostic is a flat $69 and it comes off the repair if you go ahead with it. You get the full price of the work before anyone touches the system, so the number on the invoice is the number you agreed to. If the honest answer is that the system is not worth repairing, we tell you that and quote the replacement instead of selling you a part that buys two months.
If you want to know what a given repair usually runs before you call, our breakdowns of AC repair cost in Sacramento and furnace repair cost list the common parts and what they cost here. For a replacement, the cost calculator gives you a range in about a minute.
What to do while you are waiting for us
If the problem is no cooling:
- Turn the system off at the thermostat rather than leaving it running. A unit that is short of refrigerant or has a frozen coil does more damage to itself every minute it runs.
- Check the filter. If it is grey and you cannot see light through it, pull it out and leave the slot empty until we arrive. Running with no filter for a few hours is better than running with a blocked one.
- Close blinds on the west and south sides. In Elk Grove and Natomas, where the newer homes have a lot of west-facing glass, this alone holds three or four degrees.
- Open the house up once the outside temperature drops below the inside temperature, usually around 9 or 10pm here.
If the problem is no heat:
- Check the breaker and the switch on the wall or ceiling next to the furnace. It looks like a light switch and gets flipped by accident constantly.
- Make sure the furnace door panel is seated. There is a safety switch behind it that cuts power when the panel is loose.
- Do not use the oven or a gas range to heat the house. That is how carbon monoxide calls start.
- Space heaters are fine for one room. Keep them three feet from anything soft and never on an extension cord.
What actually breaks on these calls
After a few hundred of these, the pattern is fairly tight. In summer, the top five are the run capacitor, a pitted contactor, a coil frozen solid from low airflow or low refrigerant, a condensate float switch that tripped on a clogged drain line, and a failed condenser fan motor. The first two are inexpensive parts and a short visit. We carry them.
In winter it is the flame sensor, the hot surface igniter, a pressure switch tripping on a clogged condensate trap, and a high limit switch that has been tripping for weeks because nobody changed the filter. Also short visits, also common parts.
The expensive outcomes are a failed compressor, a cracked heat exchanger, and a burned control board on a system old enough that the board is no longer made. If we find one of those, we stop and price the repair next to a replacement so you can make the call with real numbers instead of pressure. On a cracked heat exchanger we shut the gas to the unit and we do not repair it, which is the one furnace job we turn down.
Where we get to the same day
Roseville, Rocklin, Citrus Heights, Folsom, Granite Bay, Loomis and Lincoln are close to the shop and usually get a same-day slot even late in the day. Sacramento, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova and El Dorado Hills are same-day most of the time. Davis, Woodland and Yuba City depend on where the trucks already are, and we will tell you honestly on the phone rather than promising a window we will miss.
City pages with what we see in each area: AC repair in Roseville, Sacramento, Rocklin, Folsom, Citrus Heights and Elk Grove. For heating, start with furnace repair in Roseville or Sacramento.
If the system turns out to be fine and the problem is duct work, we quote duct repair separately. If it is past saving, the replacement page covers what a new system involves. And most of these calls never happen to people who get a tune-up before the season starts.
