Top-rated independent heating and cooling across Orange County and Southern California
CO Alarm Sounding
Your carbon monoxide alarm is going off and you are standing in the hallway trying to decide if it is real. Treat it as real. Get everyone outside, then call 911 or your gas utility from outside the house. Once the fire department or utility has cleared the building, call us and we will find out what your heating system was doing.
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By our service team · vetted by the techs who do this daily
The First Five Minutes, In Order
1. Get every person and pet outside, into open air. Do not stop to gather things. 2. Leave the door open behind you if you can do it without going back inside. 3. From outside, call 911 or your gas utility emergency line. Both will send someone. 4. Do a head count and stay outside. 5. If anyone has a headache, nausea, dizziness, confusion or is unusually sleepy, tell the dispatcher, because those are the signs of carbon monoxide exposure and they need medical attention. 6. Do not go back in until the fire department or the utility tells you the building is clear. That clearance is theirs to give, not yours.
What Not To Do
Do not open every window and then keep living in the house. Airing it out can drop the reading enough to silence the alarm while the source keeps producing gas. Do not pull the battery out of the alarm to stop the noise. Do not relight a pilot, open a furnace panel, poke at a gas valve or run the heat to see if the alarm goes off again. Do not go back inside for a phone charger or a laptop. And do not decide it is a false alarm because nobody feels sick, since carbon monoxide has no smell and symptoms are easy to mistake for a cold or the flu. Let the responders measure the air.
If You Also Smell Gas
A rotten egg or sulfur smell is a separate problem from carbon monoxide, and it comes first. Leave the building immediately, take everyone with you, and call 911 or the gas utility from outside. Do not flip light switches, do not use a garage door opener, and do not start a car in an attached garage. Those are all ignition sources. Once you are out and the call is made, keep your distance from the house until the utility arrives. After they have shut off gas and cleared the property, we can come out and look at what your furnace, wall heater or gas appliance connection was doing before the smell started.
When To Call Us, And What We Look At
Call us after responders have cleared the building, or the next morning if the alarm went off overnight. We service homes across Arizona, California and Nevada, and a carbon monoxide call is one we take seriously from the first phone call. On site we check the heat exchanger for cracks, look at burner condition and flame pattern, inspect the flue and vent connector for rust, disconnection or blockage, and check draft. We also look at combustion air, because a furnace in a tight closet with an undersized return can pull badly. If the system is unsafe, we shut it down and tell you plainly what it needs before it runs again.
Keeping It From Happening Again
Carbon monoxide alarms belong on every level of the house and near sleeping areas. Most units have a service life printed on the back, usually seven to ten years, and an old alarm can chirp or fail quietly. Replace them on schedule rather than waiting. Have any gas-fired heating equipment looked at once a year, ideally before the first cold snap, because that is when a cracked heat exchanger or a partly blocked flue shows up. Keep the area around a furnace closet clear, keep vents open so the system is not starved for return air, and never run a generator, grill or unvented heater indoors or in a garage.
When it is time to book
CO Alarm Sounding — common questions
My CO alarm chirped once and stopped. Is that an emergency?
A single chirp on a repeating pattern usually means low battery or end of life, not gas. A full continuous alarm means get out and call 911 or the gas utility. If you are unsure which you heard, treat it as the alarm and leave.
Can my air conditioner cause carbon monoxide?
No. Carbon monoxide comes from burning fuel, so the sources are gas furnaces, wall heaters, water heaters, fireplaces, ranges and cars. A standard AC system uses electricity and refrigerant only. Shared ductwork can still spread gas from a nearby furnace.
Do I need to replace my furnace after a carbon monoxide alarm?
Not always. Sometimes it is a disconnected vent pipe, a blocked flue or a dirty burner. A cracked heat exchanger is different and usually means replacement. We inspect first and tell you which one you have before anything is quoted.
How it works
- Step 1
Tell us the symptom
Call or fill in the quote form with what you notice. Warm air, no air, short cycling, a smell, a noise. Details like when it started help us bring the right parts on the first visit.
- Step 2
We diagnose on site
A technician checks the thermostat, the electrical side, refrigerant performance, airflow and the return sizing. We test rather than guess, then explain what failed and why in plain language before any work starts.
- Step 3
Repair and verify
We make the repair, then measure temperatures and airflow at the vents to confirm the system holds. If a duct or return is starving the equipment, we tell you what it would take to fix it.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quote before work starts
Why homeowners call us
- We know stucco tract homesMuch of the housing we service was built fast with returns too small for the tonnage installed. That single duct in the hallway explains a lot of weak airflow complaints, and we look at it before we sell you equipment.
- Marine mornings, inland afternoonsCoastal condos fight humidity and salt air, while inland homes run long afternoon cycles in triple digits. Same system, different failure patterns. We set expectations for the climate your house actually sits in.
- Diagnosis you can followYou get told which part failed, what it does and what happens if it waits. No hurry, no scare talk. If the honest answer is that the system has a few seasons left, we say that.
- Repair before replacementMost calls end in a repair, not a new system. We quote replacement only when a repair will not hold or the cost stops making sense, and we explain the reasoning either way.
- All major brands, gas & electricFrom Carrier and Trane to Lennox, Goodman, Rheem and Bryant, serviced independently.
- Straight answersWhen a replacement beats a repair, we tell you, sometimes before we roll a truck.
About this guide
Safe checks done and it still misbehaves? That's a real fault
Tell us what you tried and what it did. The booking itself takes a minute.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quotes
- All major brands
- Gas & electric
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