Top-rated independent heating and cooling across California's Central Valley and the Sierra foothills
Nothing But Cold Air
You set the thermostat, you wait, and nothing happens. No warm air, maybe no sound at all from the furnace or the air handler. The house is dropping degree by degree and you want to know whether this is a five dollar problem or a five hundred dollar one. We handle heating repair across California and Nevada, and here is the order we work through it.
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By our service team · vetted by the techs who do this daily
What "no heat at all" actually tells us
A total no-heat call splits into two groups fast. Either the system is not being told to run, or it is being told and cannot finish the sequence. If the blower never comes on and the thermostat screen is blank, we are looking at power or controls. If you hear the unit try, click, hum, then go quiet, the system is starting a heating cycle and shutting itself down on a safety. That second one is a real diagnosis, not a guess. Knowing which group you are in before you call helps us bring the right parts. Note whether anything moves, anything makes noise, and how long it lasts.
Start with the cheap causes: thermostat, breaker, filter
Most no-heat calls that end quickly end here. A thermostat with dead batteries goes dark or holds a setting it will not act on. A thermostat left on COOL or on FAN ONLY will run air with no warmth in it. Check that the heat setpoint is several degrees above the room temperature. Then check the breaker panel for a tripped breaker on the furnace or air handler circuit, and the switch on the unit itself that looks like a light switch. A filter packed with valley dust chokes airflow until a limit switch shuts the burner off. Replace it if you cannot see light through it.
Airflow and safety switches, the middle tier
Furnaces are built to shut themselves down rather than overheat, and they do it often. Restricted return air, a closed-off run of ductwork, blocked supply vents, or a dirty blower wheel all push heat exchanger temperatures up until the high limit opens. You get short bursts of warm air, then nothing, sometimes repeating. Condensate problems on high-efficiency equipment do the same thing through a float switch. Open every supply vent in the house and pull anything stacked against the return grille. Beyond that, testing a limit or a pressure switch means metering a live circuit, so that part is ours.
Ignition, gas and control board failures
If you smell gas or a rotten egg odor, or your carbon monoxide alarm sounds, leave the building first, then call 911 or your gas utility from outside, and call us after. Do not go back in to look at the furnace. When there is no odor and no alarm, the usual failures at this level are a cracked hot surface igniter, a flame sensor coated enough that the board drops out the gas valve, an inducer motor that will not spin up, or a control board that has lost a relay. Heat pumps fail differently, often on a reversing valve or a bad defrost board. All of it needs meters and manifold gauges.
What we do that you cannot from the hallway
We pull the blower door and read the control board's fault code, which tells us where in the ignition sequence the unit quit. Then we meter voltage across the transformer, the limits, the pressure switch, and the gas valve while the system tries to fire, so we see the exact point it drops out instead of replacing parts in hope. We check temperature rise across the heat exchanger and static pressure in the ductwork, because a furnace that overheats will fail again next week if the airflow stays wrong. On heat pumps we check refrigerant charge and defrost operation. Then we tell you what failed and what it takes to fix it.
Nothing But Cold Air — straight answers
My thermostat has power but the furnace does nothing. Is the thermostat bad?
Sometimes, but not usually. A lit screen only proves the thermostat has power, not that its heat call is reaching the furnace. Broken low-voltage wire, a blown control transformer, or a tripped safety on the unit all look identical from the wall.
The heat runs for two minutes then quits. Why?
That pattern almost always means a safety switch is opening. Restricted airflow from a loaded filter, closed vents, or a dirty blower wheel is the common cause. Change the filter and open the vents, then have us test the limit and pressure switches.
Can I leave the system off until you get here?
Yes, and we prefer it if the unit is short cycling or you heard anything unusual. Shut it off at the thermostat, use safe portable heat, and keep faucets dripping if temperatures are near freezing. Call us with what you observed.
How it works
- Step 1
Tell us the symptom
Call or fill in the quote form. We ask what changed, when it started, and what the thermostat reads. That tells us whether to bring parts for a cooling fault or a heating fault.
- Step 2
We diagnose on site
A technician checks the thermostat, the electrical side, airflow through the filter and coil, refrigerant pressures, and the outdoor unit. You get told what failed and why, in plain words, before anything is replaced.
- Step 3
Repair and verify
We make the repair, then run the system and measure the results at the vents. If a part needs ordering, we say so and give you a realistic window instead of a vague promise.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quote before work starts
Why homeowners call us
- Built for real valley heatWe work in areas where afternoons sit above 110 degrees and systems run for months without a break. That shapes how we size repairs, check capacitors and contactors, and judge whether a compressor is genuinely done.
- Attic and package unitsPlenty of homes across the region run attic air handlers or rooftop package units instead of a garage furnace and a side-yard condenser. We are used to the access, the duct runs, and the drain issues those setups bring.
- Dust and debris we expectAg dust, cottonwood fluff and grass clippings pack condenser coils and starve a system of airflow. We clean what we find and show you the difference, rather than adding refrigerant to a unit that just could not breathe.
- Heating too, not only ACFurnace repair, heat pump faults and no-heat calls get the same attention as summer work. Ignition problems, cracked or failing components and short cycling all get diagnosed before we recommend anything larger.
- All major brands, gas & electricFrom Carrier and Trane to Lennox, Goodman, Rheem and Bryant, serviced independently.
- Straight answersWhen a replacement beats a repair, we tell you, sometimes before we roll a truck.
About this guide
Checked everything on the list and it still acts up?
Tell us what you tried and what it did. The booking itself takes a minute.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quotes
- All major brands
- Gas & electric
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