Emergency HVAC Service in Germantown and Gaithersburg, MD
Some breakdowns cannot wait. Your heat gone in freezing weather. Your cooling gone in dangerous summer heat. Water running out of your indoor unit. Equipment that smells like it is burning. We answer those calls in Germantown, Gaithersburg, Rockville, Olney, Clarksburg and Boyds. On the phone, we tell you whether you should shut something off before we get there.
A no-heat or no-cooling call moves to the front of the schedule, ahead of routine work. We will not hand you an arrival time we are not sure we can hold. Call, and you hear the diagnostic fee up front along with an honest answer about when a technician can reach you.
The failures that count as a real emergency
No heat when it is below freezing
When it is below freezing outside, a dead heating system puts your pipes at risk right along with everyone inside your house. This is the call we move to the front of the schedule without hesitation.
No cooling in dangerous heat
A dead system in a heat wave becomes an emergency when you have infants, older adults, or anyone with a health condition in your home. Tell us who is there when you call. It changes where we place the visit.
A gas smell inside
An HVAC company is not your first call here. Get out of your house, then call your gas utility emergency line or 911 from outside. Once the utility has made the place safe, we take over the equipment side.
A carbon monoxide alarm
Get out and call 911. Carbon monoxide has no color and no smell, so your alarm is the only warning you will ever get. After the fire department clears your home, your heating equipment has to be tested before it runs again.
Water running out of the indoor unit
A failed drain or pump can send water into ceilings and finished rooms hour after hour. Turn your system off at the thermostat to stop the flow, then call.
A burning smell from the equipment
An electrical or overheating smell from your furnace or indoor unit means shut it down at the breaker, not only at the thermostat. Dust burning off during your first startup of fall is normal for an hour. A smell that keeps going is not.
How a no-heat or no-cooling call goes
You tell us what is happening
We ask what your system is doing, who is in your home, and what it feels like inside right now. That is what lets us rank the call honestly instead of for show.
We run safety checks over the phone
Plenty of failures come down to a tripped breaker, a dead thermostat battery, a furnace switch somebody bumped off, or a safety switch doing its job on your drain. We walk you through those checks over the phone. Now and then the whole thing ends right there.
Priority scheduling, and the fee stated up front
If it does need a visit, we quote the diagnostic fee on the call and place the visit ahead of routine work. You get a realistic sense of when we arrive, not a slogan.
Diagnosis and a written price
Your technician tests your system and puts the finding and the repair price in writing before any work starts. Urgency does not lift that rule. Your approval is what sets the repair in motion.
Repair and a check that it holds
We correct the fault, then run and measure your system to confirm it. If a part has to be ordered, you get a written plan for keeping your home safe in the meantime.
What to do while you wait
If your heat is out, close the doors on rooms you are not using. Let the faucets on outside walls drip when the forecast drops below freezing. Run space heaters only on the floor, clear of bedding and curtains, plugged straight into the wall. Never lean on an oven, a grill, or any outdoor burner to warm the house. Those shortcuts fill the air with carbon monoxide, and that is how a winter night turns tragic.
If your cooling is out, pull the blinds on any window the sun hits and run your ceiling and box fans. Move anyone vulnerable to the coolest level of the house, which is usually the basement. Look in on older neighbors and family the same way. If someone in the home starts showing signs of heat illness, that is a 911 call rather than an HVAC call, and the equipment can wait.
Emergency calls in Boyds, Rockville and Clarksburg homes
The pattern rarely surprises us. The first hard freeze brings a wave of no-heat calls from furnaces that barely made it through fall. The first July heat wave does the same to cooling. Homes past the gas mains near Boyds carry an added risk in winter, because a failed heat pump is often the only heat in the house. Those properties sit far enough apart that we plan the likely parts before we leave, rather than costing you a second day in the cold.
In the 1950s Twinbrook and College Gardens ramblers, the main duct runs through a crawl space or a low basement. A night without heat reaches that part of your house first. It is the first place we ask you to look. In Clarksburg and Germantown, whole developments went up inside a couple of years. The original builder equipment reaches its limit on the same schedule, so the emergency calls off those streets arrive in clusters.
What we check besides the broken part
A part that failed had a reason for failing. Low airflow. A dirty coil. A wire running hot. A drain backing up. If that reason is still there when we leave, the new part is on the same clock as the old one.
So the visit covers the rest of the system, not only the piece that quit. If we find something that was working against it, we tell you what it is and what it would take to put right.
What is your system actually doing?
If one of these is what you are seeing, start there. It tells you what is probably going on, and whether it is something you can check yourself.
Emergency HVAC Service questions, answered
What should I do if my heat quits?
Check three things before you call. The thermostat batteries and the mode setting. The breaker panel for anything tripped. And the furnace switch near the unit, which gets flipped off by accident more often than you would think. If the heat is still out, call. No-heat calls go first on the schedule, and we quote the fee on that same call.
What should I do if I smell gas?
Leave the house without touching a light switch or anything electrical, and call your gas utility emergency line or 911 once you are outside. Do not call an HVAC company first. The utility makes the site safe. After that, we handle testing and repairing the heating equipment before it runs again.
Is a carbon monoxide alarm an emergency?
Yes, and treat it as one every single time. Get everyone out of the house and call 911. The fire department will measure the air and find the source. Before the heating system runs again, it needs its combustion tested, since a cracked heat exchanger or a blocked flue is the usual cause. We do that testing.
Is no air conditioning an emergency?
That depends on who is in the home and what the weather is doing. For a healthy household during a mild stretch, it is a priority repair. In a heat wave, or with infants, older adults, or medical conditions in the house, we treat it as an emergency and place it ahead of routine work. Tell us the real situation and we will rank it honestly.
Do you take emergency calls at night or on weekends?
You can call any time the system quits. We are not a 24 hour call center. A call that comes in after hours gets returned in the order it arrived, with no-heat and no-cooling moved to the front of the line. We would rather be straight with you about timing than post a promise a rough day would break.
Does an emergency visit cost more than a normal one?
We quote the diagnostic fee when you call, before anything is booked, so you know the number ahead of time either way. Any repair price is put in writing before work starts, exactly as it would be on a routine call. Urgency changes where you land in the schedule. It does not change the rule that you approve every price first.
What can I safely do about heat while I wait?
Run portable electric space heaters on the floor, clear of bedding and curtains, plugged straight into wall outlets rather than power strips. Close off the rooms you are not using. Never heat with an oven, a stovetop, a grill, or a generator indoors, since all of them give off carbon monoxide. If the forecast is below freezing, let the faucets on outside walls drip.
If your heat or cooling has quit, call Mora Heating & Air now and we will tell you honestly when your technician can be there.
Or tell us what your system is doing
Send us the details and we will call you back. If the house is very hot or very cold right now, calling is faster.