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Heating and cooling for Smithtown houses
Gas and oil heating, central air, heat pumps and ductwork — with an instrument on every visit and a sheet of readings afterwards.
No heat
Diagnosed from the cheap end. The columns below are the order we work in, and it is deliberate.
Power and controls
Breaker, the emergency switch at the head of the basement stairs, the switch on the appliance, and the thermostat with its batteries. A real share of first-cold-night calls end here and we say so.
Filter and airflow
A blocked filter trips the limit switch: the appliance lights, heats, shuts down and locks out. It reads exactly like a failure and it costs nothing to rule out.
Ignition and sensing
On gas, the igniter, flame sensor and pressure switch. On oil, the nozzle, electrodes and cad cell. Most genuine faults live here and most are inexpensive.
And the exchanger
Inspected on every no-heat call whatever the fault was. A cracked one ends the visit — shut off and tagged, no repair attempted.
Gas, or a carbon monoxide alarm
Do not ring a contractor first. Get everybody out of the house and, from outside, call 911 and your gas utility’s emergency line. They arrive faster than any contractor, they do not charge you for a false alarm, and making the property safe is their job. Ring us afterwards — finding out why it happened is ours.
Oil, gas and heat pumps
This part of Suffolk County has all three, often on the same street, and the right answer is not the same in every house.
Oil
A proper oil service is mostly cleaning: the chamber and flue passages, a new nozzle every year, electrodes set, filter and strainer changed, pump pressure checked, and the combustion set with an analyser. It takes real time and the part most often skipped is the cleaning.
Tank testing, tank removal and anything to do with a leak are specialist work with their own regulations, and we will tell you to get a tank specialist rather than taking it on.
Gas and heat pumps
Gas appliances are combustion tested with an analyser and the readings written down. Where a conversion is being discussed, the venting and the chimney are part of the conversation from the start rather than a surprise afterwards.
On a heat pump the two things worth looking at are the defrost cycle and the auxiliary heat. A heat pump running on auxiliary electric heat all winter will keep the house warm and produce a bill nobody can explain, and the only way to find it is to look.
The room that never keeps up, and replacement
Measured, not argued about
Nearly always airflow: a branch added during a remodel, a crushed flexible run, a damper closed years ago, a return far too small, or leakage into an attic. We measure static pressure and the airflow at that register and at one that works.
An oversized replacement makes it slightly worse, and that is what usually gets sold.
What a replacement quote is built from
- A room-by-room heat loss calculation from the actual construction — not floor area and not the old unit’s rating.
- The existing ducts, measured. If they cannot carry what the new equipment needs, better equipment makes the house worse.
- The venting. Going to a high-efficiency appliance changes it completely, and on a chimney shared with a water heater it changes that too.
- The electrical supply, read off the plate of the proposed unit and compared with the circuit that is there.
- One page with model numbers, capacities, what is removed, what is altered, and the price.