Winter is the short season here, but the cold arrives fast and the equipment has been idle for months. Here is what to do when the heat quits, starting with safety.
A gas smell, a burning smell that is not the usual first-fire dust, smoke, or a carbon monoxide alarm is not a heating problem — it is a leave-the-house problem. Get everyone out, do not flip switches or light anything on the way, and call 911 or your gas utility’s emergency line from outside. Call this number after that. Maya, who answers the line, will still take your details for the repair, but nothing on this page is more important than that first step.
Carbon monoxide deserves its own sentence: a cracked heat exchanger on an aging gas furnace can put CO into the supply air with no smell at all. If a CO alarm sounds, treat it as real, get out, and have the furnace checked before it runs again.
San Angelo averages about 50 nights a year below freezing, the January normal low sits around 33°F, and the record low is 1°F. Cold snaps tend to arrive behind a fast-moving front, which means the first hard freeze of the season is often the first time the furnace has been asked to do real work since March — and the night it fails is the night it was needed.
For most households a night in the 30s with no heat is uncomfortable rather than dangerous, and that matters for how you describe the call. A house with an infant, an older adult, or someone ill, on a night that will drop into the teens, is an emergency. A heat pump that is running but not keeping up on a 40-degree morning usually is not. Say which one you have; it is what decides how quickly your details move.
Thermostat first: set to heat, set point above room temperature, fresh batteries if it takes them. Then the furnace switch — most gas furnaces have a light-switch-style disconnect on or near the unit that gets bumped off. Then the breaker. Then the filter: a furnace that starts, runs a minute, and shuts off is often overheating on a clogged filter and tripping its own limit switch. If the furnace has a sight glass, a rapidly blinking status light is a fault code the pro will want to know about.
If you have a heat pump, an outdoor unit that steams for a few minutes is a normal defrost cycle, and vent air that is warm but not hot is normal too. A heat pump running constantly on auxiliary or emergency heat with the house still cold is a real fault, and so is an outdoor unit encased in ice that never clears.
The line at (325) 308-0897 is answered at any hour. Maya will ask what the system is doing, whether it is an emergency, your name, a callback number, and where the property is, then pass everything straight to a local, licensed HVAC company that works in San Angelo and the Concho Valley. No-heat calls in a freeze are flagged so they are handled first.
We will not promise you a time, because nobody on this line is the technician and an arrival time we cannot see is not a promise we are willing to make. You will get a callback from a real person who will quote the diagnostic fee before driving out and tell you honestly whether you are looking at an igniter, a flame sensor, a control board, or a furnace at the end of its life.
Close off unused rooms, gather in one, and use space heaters only with the manufacturer’s clearances and never with an extension cord. Never use a gas oven, a grill, or a generator indoors for heat. If the house is dropping toward the 40s inside and you have somewhere warm to go, go. For the longer term, a fall heating check before the first freeze is the cheapest emergency you will never have; see maintenance plans and the full heating repair page. When the heat is out now in San Angelo, call (325) 308-0897 and say so.
Every climate and health figure on this page traces to a public, authoritative source. We do not publish statistics we cannot cite.