What to Do (and Not Do) During a No-Heat Emergency

Quick answer: If a carbon monoxide alarm is sounding, or anyone has a headache, dizziness or nausea, get everyone outside and call 911 first. Otherwise, don’t heat with your oven, don’t run a generator indoors, and don’t keep relighting a pilot that won’t stay lit. Close off unused rooms, let faucets drip on the coldest nights, and have your address, system age and fuel type ready when you call us.

A no-heat call in the middle of a Maine or New Hampshire winter night is stressful, but a few minutes of the right steps — and avoiding a couple of common mistakes — can keep everyone safe while you wait for help.

First: Is It a Carbon Monoxide Emergency?

If you have a carbon monoxide alarm sounding, or anyone in the home has symptoms like headache, dizziness, or nausea alongside a heating system that’s stopped working, treat it as a potential CO emergency, not just a comfort issue. Get everyone outside into fresh air immediately and call 911 before you call us. Don’t go back inside to investigate the equipment yourself. This applies to any fuel-burning system — oil, gas, or propane.

What Not to Do

• Don’t run a generator in the garage, basement, or anywhere near open windows — generator exhaust is a leading cause of accidental CO poisoning during winter outages.
• Don’t use your oven or stovetop to heat the house. Gas ovens aren’t designed for continuous operation and are a genuine CO and fire risk used that way.
• Don’t ignore a persistent gas smell — if you smell gas, leave the house, don’t operate any switches or open flames, and call your gas utility or 911 from outside before calling us.
• Don’t keep trying to relight a boiler or furnace pilot repeatedly if it won’t stay lit — a pilot that won’t hold usually means a safety component has shut the system down on purpose, and repeated relighting attempts can be unsafe.

What Is Safe to Do While You Wait?

• Close doors to unused rooms to concentrate whatever heat you still have.
• Let faucets drip slightly on the coldest nights to reduce the risk of frozen pipes if the outage is going to stretch on.
• Layer up and use safe supplemental heat sources you already use routinely and know are safe — this isn’t the moment to try an unfamiliar heating device for the first time.
• If you have a backup heat source (like a working wood stove), it’s fine to use it as long as it’s something you already run safely in normal conditions.

What to Have Ready When You Call

Having a few details ready speeds up the call and helps us get the right technician and parts to you:

• Your address
• The approximate age of your system
• Its fuel type (oil, gas, or propane)
• A brief description of what’s happening — error codes, unusual noises, when it stopped, anything you tried

We’re Actually Available, Every Hour

If you experience a complete loss of heat during freezing weather, a major water leak, or smell gas, call our emergency line — we maintain a live, local answering service every hour of the year, with dedicated technicians on call throughout Maine and New Hampshire every night, weekend, and holiday. If you’re on our annual maintenance agreement, you get automatic priority dispatch, jumping to the front of the emergency queue during major regional cold snaps when call volume spikes.

Call Maine at (207)-613-6886 or New Hampshire at (603)-662-2809, or visit our Contact page. If it’s a gas smell or CO alarm, call 911 first.