How to Get Your Heat Working Again
If you’ve ever lost your heat on a bitter cold night, you know how stressful this can be, especially if you have elderly relatives or young children living with you. But the first thing you need to do is to stay calm. That’s because there are many simple reasons that can cause your heat to stop working. Sometimes, you may even be able to fix the problem yourself!
The most common reasons for losing heat:
- You may have tripped a circuit breaker or blown a fuse.
- Your fuel tank may be empty.
- The power switches to your heating system may have been turned off accidentally.
- Your thermostat may be on the wrong setting. Also, if the display screen on a digital thermostat is blank, you either need new batteries or the power supply has been interrupted.
As a last resort for getting your heat back, press the reset button on your oil burner once. If your furnace or boiler starts to run again but shuts down after a few minutes, do not press the reset button again. Pressing it more than once can flood the system with oil and result in a costly repair.
For your convenience, we have put together a troubleshooting guide that gives you a step-by-step guide that shows you everything you should check before calling us for emergency service. Why not bookmark it now for easy access?
If you go through all of these tips and can’t figure out the problem, it’s time to call us.
When a Carroll service technician arrives, tell him everything you did to the system and if anything out of the ordinary happened (an unusual noise, smoke, a strange smell, etc.).
In many cases, this will help our technician find the problem—and get your heat back on–faster.
More Hot Tips
- Mark the circuit breaker (or fuse) that controls your heating system.
- Make sure you know the location of your system’s power switches.
- Regularly check the condition of your furnace filter, or the water gauge level if you have a boiler.
