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NEED YOUR HEATER REPAIRED?
**Choosing the Right Heater Repair Company

When your furnace breaks down, who can you depend on? By choosing Fox Family Heating and Air Conditioning for your repair, you are guaranteed fast, honest and friendly service.  Our technicians will get out to your home to diagnose the problem as soon as they possibly can.

We’re careful and protective of your home by putting on shoe covers and cleaning up after ourselves. Our technicians will always greet you with a smile and clearly communicate what the problem is to you.

Before we begin the repair, you will be presented with options for getting your system back up and running. When we do get your system running again, most of those parts are covered with a LIFETIME WARRANTY.  So, if the part breaks for any reason, as long as you own the system, we’ll replace it, no questions asked.

Heater is Not Blowing Warm Air?

We Repair all Brands of Air Conditioners:
We can work on just about anything. No matter what make or model heating system you have in your home, we have worked on it.  Our staff specializes in residential heating and air conditioning repair on the following brands: Ruud, Rheem, American Standard, Coleman, Amana, York, Carrier, Bryant, Lennox, and Goodman.

A lot of our homeowners live in Sacramento, Rancho Cordova, Folsom, and El Dorado Hills.  When their heater isn’t blowing warm air, it can get pretty uncomfortable.

Let’s double-check to see if you can do a few things to make sure it’s not something you can fix yourself.

Some common things we show up for and fix real quick (and the homeowner kicks themselves for) are things like air filters, thermostats, breakers, and some other basic maintenance items.

DOUBLE-CHECK THE THERMOSTAT
Make sure the thermostat is set to HEAT.  Then set the temperature to your desired temperature. Some people don’t know what temperature they should set their thermostat, so we wrote an article about it if you’d like to look at that topic.

The heater takes a minute for it to go through its sequence before it starts blowing warm air. If that’s not turning your system on, let’s check the power.

Are the batteries on the backside of the thermostat corroded or depleted?  If so, go ahead and replace them.  Some thermostats don’t even have batteries. The HVAC system powers them.  Many smart thermostats like the Nest, Honeywell 9000, Ecobee, and others are like this.  If the display is blank, we need to check for power at the furnace or air handler.  These are usually found in the attic, a closet, or in your garage.  Caution, opening a furnace door can expose you to high and low voltages that can injure you.

AIR FILTER
Check to make sure your filter is clean. If you don’t know where the filter is, give us a call, and we can probably help you find it over the phone.  These need to be changed out every 90 days.  This is essential maintenance and probably the single most important thing you could do to keep your system running for many years.

If your filter has that brownish tinge to it, it’s time to change it.  Your system needs to breathe in so it can breathe out for you.  An impacted filter changed to a clean one will allow this.  Now how is your system running?

MAKE SURE IT’S PLUGGED IN AT THE FURNACE
The furnace has a 120v plug, just like a lamp.  Make sure it’s plugged in.  Your furnace is either in the closet, attic, or garage.  Some people have an AC/Heating package unit up on the roof. It runs on 240v and has an additional electrical service disconnect at the unit. Checking those high voltage fuses might take a professional to do, but some DIY’ers feel comfortable doing it. If the breaker is on, fuses are good, and the unit is plugged in, something else is going on.

CHECK THE LED INDICATOR ON THE CONTROL BOARD
If they want to help with this, I tell people to look inside the little sight glass on the front panel.  Some systems have this, and some systems don’t. Is there a light blinking?  How many times?  Is it steady or fast?  This is information you can tell us if you end up calling for service.  If there is no blinking light or steady light, then power isn’t getting to the control board, which is the system’s brain.  It could be plugged in, and power is getting to the furnace, but there is a transformer, a door switch, and other wiring and fuses to check.  Advanced technical skill is required for that kind of troubleshooting, though.

These blinking LEDs tell you what parts to check with your voltage meter in conjunction with the sequence of events that make up the starting cycle of the system every time it’s turned on.  For instance, in heating mode, one of the system’s first things is to make a safety check.  There are pressure switches, roll-out switches, and others that have to be in the correct position to allow the furnace to move on.  A Goodman furnace, for example, may blink three times for a safety that’s not working, then rest for a second, blink three times again, rest again, etc.  It will keep trying to start the system a few more times and then finally lock itself out, kick on the fan (to let the owner know something’s not right) and then start blinking the code again.

Different brands have different flash settings too.  So three flashes for one brand might mean something different for another. Want to know where to find the LED indicator list of flashes and what they mean?  They’re usually located on the other side of that door with the sight glass on it.  Again, be careful of high and low voltages in the furnaces if you’re going to do that.

CHECKING THE BREAKER
If your system isn’t blowing any air at all, double-check the electrical breaker in the main panel.  It has three positions: ON, TRIPPED, and OFF.  ON and OFF are when the switch is all the way to the left or right.  TRIPPED is if it’s in the middle position.  As a test, flip it to OFF and then back to ON.  Does it trip again immediately?  If so, there’s a wiring issue that a pro should probably check. If you flip it on and the system starts up, you may have solved the problem for now.  If the breaker stays on for a while and then trips again, it’s likely the breaker keeps tripping because there is excessive strain on it.

Breakers trip due to heat feeding back to it from the device and wire it’s protecting.  For more info on why my breaker keeps tripping, check this article and video out on the topic in our Learning Center.

FAN MODE
Let’s say your system is getting power – and you know this because your fan won’t stop running.  The air is coming out of the vents in each room, but you do not want it to.  Double-check the thermostat’s FAN mode.  Make sure it’s on the AUTO setting.  There is an ON and an AUTO setting for the fan.  If the fan is set to ON, it will run continuously.  Some people like to do this because they have an air purifier connected to their HVAC system, and those work by having air blow past them.  Most people have their fan set to AUTO, however.  Flipping your fan over to AUTO will make it come on only when the thermostat is asking for heat.

This is definitely one of those where the customer kicks themselves when they find the thermostat’s fan is in the ON setting.

NO LUCK?
If you do call in for a service repair, rest assured Fox Family technicians are trained to thoroughly evaluate your heating system from head to toe so that you can get your home comfortable again at the most crucial times of the year.  We know it’s an honor to be invited into your home to service your furnace and AC system.  We promise to earn your trust and respect because we know so many contractors say they are the best HVAC company in Sacramento, Rancho Cordova, Folsom, Fair Oaks, and Elk Grove.

We won’t be like the big companies who are just trying to sell you a whole new system either!  We can actually repair any part of your furnace as long as the part is available.  Some HVAC systems are so old they just don’t make the parts for them anymore.  Usually, that is around the 20-year mark for a furnace.  So, if you are dealing with a heater repair in Sacramento, trust Fox Family Heating and Air Conditioning to come out and let you know what is going on.