An HVAC emergency is a failure that puts people or the house at risk: a gas smell, a carbon monoxide alarm, smoke from the furnace, water coming through a ceiling, or a dead air conditioner on the hottest afternoon of the year with a baby or an elderly parent at home. Urgent calls in San Jose are taken 24/7 at (650) 397-7060. What you do in the first few minutes, before anyone arrives, matters more than anything else on this page.
The first minutes: what to do right now
| Situation | Do this now | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Gas smell (rotten eggs) | Get everyone out. Do not flip switches, light anything or use a phone inside | Call your gas utility or 911 from outside; call us once they say it is safe |
| Carbon monoxide alarm | Get everyone, pets included, into fresh air | Call 911 and stay out until responders clear the house; the furnace stays off until it is checked |
| Smoke or burning smell from the equipment | Turn the system off at the thermostat, then at the breaker | If smoke keeps coming or you see flames, leave and call 911 |
| Water coming through a ceiling | Turn the system off, put a bucket under the drip, move what you can | Stay out from under a sagging ceiling |
| No cooling in extreme heat | Turn the AC off if it hums, clicks or trips the breaker | Move anyone at risk to the coolest room or somewhere air-conditioned |
| No heat on a cold night | Check the thermostat setting and the furnace switch | Use space heaters with clear space around them, plugged straight into the wall; never heat with a gas oven or a grill |
What can wait until morning
Not every failure needs a night visit. If the house is uncomfortable but nobody is at risk, if the system short cycles or makes a new noise without any burning smell, if one room runs warmer than the rest, or if the thermostat is blank (try fresh batteries first), a daytime appointment is usually fine. Same-day service is available for most calls received before noon. Not sure? Call anyway, and we will tell you honestly whether it can wait.
How a 24/7 call works
- You call. We ask what the system is doing, what you have already tried and who is in the house. Those answers decide whether someone comes out tonight or first thing in the morning.
- Safety comes first, even on the phone. A gas smell or a carbon monoxide alarm goes to your gas utility or 911 before it comes to us.
- Timing. We do not quote a fixed arrival time. It depends on the hour, the weather and the calls already open, and you get a straight answer about what we can do.
- The technician makes it safe. Power, gas and water are brought under control before anything else.
- Diagnosis. The electrical side, the gas and ignition or refrigerant side, and airflow are all checked before a fix is recommended.
- The price before the work. You approve the price before work starts, and the diagnostic fee is waived if you go ahead with the repair.
- Fix, or make safe and schedule. Common failure parts such as capacitors, contactors, igniters, flame sensors and fuses are usually carried, so many calls end with the system running again. A compressor or a model-specific board may have to be ordered; then the system is left safe and the repair is booked.
San Jose HVAC Pros is licensed, bonded and insured. The emergency HVAC cost guide explains what moves the price of an urgent visit.
The urgent calls San Jose homes make
Hot valley afternoons. Urgent cooling calls cluster on the hottest days, after a system has run for hours. Weak capacitors, burnt contactors, failed fan motors and iced coils lead the list. Attic air handlers add their own emergency: a blocked condensate drain overflows the pan in the attic heat, and water comes through the ceiling below.
Builder-grade equipment under load. In Evergreen tract homes, original equipment reaching replacement age tends to fail at peak demand, exactly when it is needed most.
Larger homes with two systems. In Almaden Valley homes with one system per floor, close the doors to the rooms served by the failed unit and let the working system carry the rest until the repair. Our page on emergency HVAC in Almaden Valley covers that area in more detail.
Cool nights. Winters are mild, but nights get cold enough to matter for babies and older people. Furnace ignition and flame sensor failures, and heat pumps stuck in defrost or blowing cold air, are the usual causes. An older furnace in a Willow Glen or Cambrian home that keeps tripping its safety controls should not be forced back on: those controls are doing their job.
New equipment on old panels. If a recently added AC or heat pump trips the main breaker, or the lights dim sharply every time it starts, leave it off. The circuit or the panel may be overloaded, and that needs checking before the system runs again.
After the emergency
Many emergencies start as small problems that a spring or fall check would have caught. Once the system is running again, see AC repair, furnace repair or heat pump repair for what usually fails, and consider a maintenance plan so the next failure is found on a weekday morning, not at midnight.