Heating Repair in Smithville, ON — What to Do When the Heat Goes Out

In Smithville, heating repair does not always mean furnace repair. Some houses here run on a gas furnace and ducts, some on a boiler and radiators, some on a heat pump, and some on electric heat. Which one you have decides what has gone wrong, who is legally allowed to work on it, and how long it takes to get the right part. We have been family-owned since 2014, our technicians are TSSA-certified, and we work on all of them across Smithville and the townships around it.

What to Do First When the Heat Goes Out in Smithville

Deal with safety first, then check three things that are not repairs, then call us.

1. Gas smell, or a carbon monoxide alarm: everyone leaves the house first. Enbridge’s own instruction is to call 1-866-763-5427 or 911 “from a safe distance (like a neighbour’s home)”, and its emergency line runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (1) 2. Set the thermostat to Heat, and turn it up past the room temperature it is showing. 3. Check the breaker panel, and the switch on the wall beside the furnace or boiler. 4. If the house runs on propane or oil, read the tank gauge. 5. Call the office.

Which Heating System You Have Changes the Repair

Four kinds of heating system are common around Smithville, and you can tell yours apart without opening anything.

A gas furnace and ducts. Warm air reaches you through vents in the floors or the walls, pushed through them by one blower in the basement. This is the most common arrangement in town, and it is what most people picture when they say the heat is out. We set out the checks worth doing before you book, and what happens once we are there, on the checks that apply when the heating is a gas furnace.

A boiler. Heat arrives as hot water, either through radiators or through pipes run under the floor. There is no ductwork and no blower, so a breakdown looks different from the start. The radiators go cold and the house cools off slowly instead of all at once. We cover how a hot-water system heats through radiators instead of ducts separately.

A heat pump. The outdoor unit keeps working through the winter, which surprises people who expect it to sit idle like an air conditioner. Natural Resources Canada explains that a heat pump moves heat rather than making it, and that cold-climate models are built to keep going well below freezing, down to minus 30 Celsius. (2) That changes what counts as a breakdown, because ice on the outdoor coil in January is often the unit defrosting itself on purpose. We go through why an outdoor unit ices up and stops producing warm air on its own page.

Electric heat. Baseboards along the walls, or an electric furnace. No flame, no vent and no gas line, and that puts the repair under a different licence. The next section explains why that matters.

Older houses in Smithville and Grimsby often have two of these at once, because somebody added a system and left the original one in place. Work out which one is meant to be heating the room you are standing in.

Who Is Allowed to Work on Your Heating System in Ontario

Ontario splits heating work between two regulators, and which one covers your repair comes down to the fuel rather than the job title of the person you call.

Anything that burns fuel belongs to the Technical Standards and Safety Authority. A gas, propane or oil appliance has to be worked on by a TSSA-certified fuels technician, employed by a contractor TSSA has registered. We hold TSSA Gas Technician and TSSA Heating Contractor certification, which is what allows us to work on the fuel side of your system.

The electrical side belongs to the Electrical Safety Authority, which puts it plainly: “Licensed Electrical Contractors (LECs) are the only businesses in Ontario legally authorized to do electrical work in your home.” (3) An electric furnace, a baseboard heater, or the circuit feeding either of them, is not a gas job at all.

Two things you can check before anybody starts. A licensed electrical contractor carries a seven-digit ECRA/ESA licence number, and ESA says it appears on their vehicles, their business cards and their estimates. The contractor also has to file a notification of work with ESA before the work begins. ESA treats being asked to file it yourself as a sign the contractor is not licensed. (3)

Which side the problem sits on decides who you call. If the heat is out and the system burns gas or propane, that is our work. If the trouble sits in the wiring, the panel or an electric heater, you want a licensed electrical contractor. We would rather tell you that than send somebody who cannot legally finish the job.

Heating Repair When the House Is Not on the Gas Main

Not every house around Smithville is joined to the natural gas main. Out in the rural parts of West Lincoln and Haldimand, propane and heating oil are still common, and a repair on those systems runs a little differently.

Propane sits under the same regulator as natural gas and needs the same certification. The appliance itself runs on a different fuel at a different pressure. The tank in the yard is either yours or the supplier’s, and that decides who you phone when the tank runs empty or starts leaking.

Oil carries its own rules. TSSA states that “by law, all contractors working on fuel oil equipment, such as underground tanks, must be registered with the TSSA”. Anyone repairing, installing, removing or servicing those tanks “must also be trained and certified”. (4) So an oil system is not work for a general handyman, and a buried tank is not work for a heating technician either.

On propane and oil you are storing your own fuel, and a tank that has run dry behaves exactly like a broken furnace. The thermostat calls for heat, nothing lights, and the house gets cold. Read the gauge first. It costs nothing and it is the check people skip.

What Affects Heating Repair Cost in Smithville

Three things move the cost of a heating repair.

The first is which trade the work falls under. A gas repair and an electrical repair are two separate licences and two separate visits, so a system that has gone wrong on both sides can need both.

The second is which part has failed. An igniter, a thermocouple or a run capacitor is a common part and a van carries them. We order a control board or a blower motor against the model number on the plate inside the door, and a system that went out of production years ago takes longer to supply. The same symptom can mean one short visit or a wait, and nobody can tell you which until a technician has looked at it.

The third is what has been built around the appliance since it went in. A furnace in an open basement and the same furnace boxed into a finished laundry room are not the same amount of work to reach.

That is why a price quoted over the phone means very little. Ask for a written estimate before the work starts. In Ontario, once an estimate forms part of the contract, the final price cannot come in more than 10 percent above it unless you have agreed to extra work. (5)

Heating Repair Questions From Smithville Homeowners

Why has my heating suddenly stopped working? Most sudden no-heat calls trace back to the thermostat, the power supply, the fuel supply, or a safety device that has shut the appliance down deliberately. You can check the first three yourself. The fourth needs a technician, because a safety device that trips is reporting something else.

Can a plumber fix central heating? In Ontario that depends on the fuel, not on the trade name. A gas, propane or oil appliance needs a TSSA-certified technician, whatever the company on the van calls itself. Plenty of plumbing and heating firms hold that certification. Ask to see it.

Why is my heater running but not heating? Air is moving and heat is not reaching you, which splits the problem in two. Either the appliance is not making heat, or it is making heat that never gets to the room. A furnace that runs and blows cool air is not making heat. Warm air at one vent and nothing at another means the heat is not getting around the house.

How do I reset my heating system? Most systems reset if you switch the power off at the breaker or the service switch, wait a minute, and switch it back on. Do that once. A system that needs resetting a second time has told you it is going to keep shutting down. That is when to call us.

Is an old heating system worth repairing? That depends on its age and on how much it has already cost you this winter. We set the whole argument out, with Hydro One’s own guidance behind it, on how old is too old, and what Hydro One says about it.

Book a Heating Repair in Smithville

Tell the office three things when you ring: which system the house has, what it is doing now, and when it started. Those three answers decide who we send and what they bring.

Heating repair is one part of what we look after. The whole heating side of the house covers the furnaces, boilers and heat pumps themselves.

References

1. Enbridge Gas, Contact Us, enbridgegas.com
2. Natural Resources Canada, Heat pump basics, natural-resources.canada.ca
3. Electrical Safety Authority, Finding the Right Contractor, esasafe.com
4. Technical Standards and Safety Authority, Fuel Oil, tssa.org
5. Government of Ontario, Your rights when starting home renovations or repairs, ontario.ca