Homeowners' pick for heating and cooling across north Florida and the Suwannee Valley
CO Alarm Sounding
Your carbon monoxide alarm is going off and you are standing in the hallway trying to decide if it is real. Treat it as real. Get everyone outside, then call 911 or your gas utility from outside the house. Once the emergency crew has cleared the home, call us and we will look at the heating equipment that caused it.
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Taking calls until 5:00 PM ET
By the Suwannee Valley AC & Heating service team · reviewed by our working technicians
The first five minutes, in order
1. Get every person and pet out of the house and into fresh air. Do not stop to gather things. 2. Leave the door open behind you if you can do it without going back inside. 3. From outside, call 911 or your gas utility's emergency line. Both send someone. 4. Count heads and stay outside, away from the garage and away from the outdoor unit. 5. Do not go back in for any reason until the fire department or the utility says the house is clear. If anyone has a headache, nausea, dizziness or confusion, tell the dispatcher on that first call.
What not to do
Do not open windows to air the house out before you call. It can thin the reading enough that responders cannot find the source, and the leak keeps going. Do not pull the batteries out of the alarm to stop the noise. Do not light anything, and do not flip light switches on your way out. Do not try to find the leak yourself, and do not open up a furnace, a water heater or any gas line. Do not run a car or generator in an attached garage while you wait. And do not assume a quiet alarm means a fixed problem. It usually means the air moved, not that the source stopped.
Where the carbon monoxide usually comes from
Anything in the house that burns fuel can produce carbon monoxide when it is not venting properly. Gas furnaces are the common one in heating season, especially a cracked heat exchanger or a flue that has rusted, separated or gotten blocked by a bird nest. Gas water heaters, gas ranges, fireplaces and space heaters are on the list too. So are cars idling in an attached garage and generators run too close to the house. Across Florida, Georgia and South Carolina we also see homes with heat pumps and a gas backup, where the gas side only runs a few weeks a year and nobody has looked at the flue in a long time.
When to call us, and what we do
Call us after the emergency responders have been out, or the next morning if it happened overnight. Tell us what the alarm did, how long it sounded and whether the heat was running at the time. We come out and inspect the combustion side of your heating system: the heat exchanger, the burners, the flue and the draft. If we find a cracked heat exchanger, we will tell you plainly and shut the equipment down rather than patch it. If the heating system is clear, we will say that too, so you know to look at the water heater or another fuel-burning source.
Keeping it from happening again
Put a carbon monoxide alarm on every floor and outside the sleeping areas, and test them when you change the clocks. Alarms wear out. Most have a date printed on the back and a life of seven to ten years, so replace them when they age out instead of waiting for a chirp. Have the gas side of your heating system looked at before each heating season, even in a mild year, because a flue can rust through whether the unit ran or not. Keep the outdoor vent terminations clear of leaves, wasp nests and mulch. And never run a generator in a garage, a carport or near a window.
When it is time to book
CO Alarm Sounding — common questions
My alarm sounded once and then stopped. Do I still need to call anyone?
Yes. A single sound means the alarm saw carbon monoxide. Leave, call 911 or the gas utility from outside, and let them check. A stopped alarm usually means the air shifted, not that the source is gone.
Can a heat pump give off carbon monoxide?
No. A heat pump does not burn fuel, so it cannot produce carbon monoxide. If your system has gas backup heat, a gas water heater or a fireplace, those can, and they are where we look first.
How do I tell a carbon monoxide alarm from a smoke alarm?
Carbon monoxide alarms usually sound four quick beeps, and most have a digital readout. Smoke alarms sound three. Either way, get everyone outside first and sort out which one it was from the yard.
How it works
- Step 1
Tell us the symptoms
You describe what changed. No cold air, a breaker that keeps tripping, water near the air handler, a smell, a noise. That gives us a head start on parts before we ever leave the shop.
- Step 2
We diagnose on site
A technician checks the thermostat, the electrical side, airflow through the filter and coil, refrigerant behavior and the outdoor unit. We look at the whole system, because a frozen coil usually points somewhere else.
- Step 3
You decide the repair
We explain what failed, what it takes to fix it, and how long the rest of the system is likely to hold up. You pick the repair. We do not start work you did not approve.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quote before work starts
Why homeowners call us
- Rural routes are normal for usWe drive long stretches between calls and we plan for it. Trucks carry the common heat pump and air conditioner repair parts so a diagnosis does not turn into a second trip on a hot afternoon.
- Heat pumps and sandy soilMost homes we visit run a heat pump, and sand, lawn clippings and pollen pack the outdoor coil fast. We clear it, check the defrost side in winter, and show you what we found before we close it up.
- Well water housesHomes on well water bring their own quirks, from pump-driven electrical noise to hard water on drain lines and condensate pans. We know where those systems clog and where the slow leaks hide.
- Heating repair tooCold snaps in this region are short and hard. We do heating repair and heater repair on heat pumps, strip heat and furnaces, so one crew handles your system in July and again in January.
- All major brands, gas & electricOne independent crew for Carrier, Trane, Lennox, Goodman, Rheem and more.
- Straight answersIf a system is not worth repairing, we say so, often right on the phone.
About this guide
If the safe checks didn't fix it, the fault is real
Describe what you found and we'll take it from there. Booking takes about a minute.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quotes
- All major brands
- Gas & electric
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