Sample Heating & Cooling Call

Heating emergency in Richmond

Safety first, then the phone. Below is the whole of what is safe to do yourself — anything behind a panel, a pilot or a gas valve is licensed work.

604-555-0142

You smell gas — rotten eggs

  1. Do not flip any switch, light anything, or start a fan.
  2. Get everyone outside, and leave the door open behind you.
  3. From outside, call FortisBC’s 24-hour gas emergency line: 1-800-663-9911.

Leave the building first, call from outside. Once FortisBC has made it safe, the system gets looked at properly before it runs again.

The carbon monoxide alarm is going off

  1. Get everyone outside into fresh air.
  2. From outside, call 911.
  3. Stay out until the source has been found — an alarm with no obvious cause is still an alarm.

Leave first, call from outside. CO has no smell of its own; the alarm is the only warning you get, so it is always taken at its word.

No heat, and the house is getting cold

  1. Set the thermostat to HEAT and take the setpoint two degrees above the room.
  2. Find the furnace switch — it looks like a light switch near the unit — and check it is ON.
  3. At the panel, look for a tripped breaker. Reset it once.
  4. If the filter is where you can see it, check whether it is choked with dust.

That is the end of the safe list. Anything behind a panel, a pilot light or a gas valve is licensed work — if the list did not fix it, the call is the next step.

Water around the furnace or the hot-water tank

  1. If there is a valve on the cold line into the tank and it turns by hand, close it.
  2. Move what you can out of the water’s path.
  3. Do not stand in water and touch anything electrical.

A tank that is leaking from the body does not seal itself — closing the valve buys time, and the call decides whether it is a fitting or the tank.

Say what you see and smell. The fault gets found before anything gets opened up.

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