Heating in Washington DC
No heat, short bursts of heat, or a furnace that lights and then gives up. A licensed technician diagnoses it for $89 and quotes the repair before touching anything.
- Diagnostic fee
- $89
- Typical total
- $220 – $450
- Usual response
- Same day
- On site
- 1 – 2 hours
At a glance
Work warranted 12 months
If you smell gas, leave the building first and call the gas company from outside. Do not wait for a technician, and do not use a light switch or phone indoors on the way out.
What we usually find
Runs for a minute, then shuts off
Classic dirty flame sensor. The furnace lights, fails to confirm the flame, and shuts down for safety. It is one of the cheapest faults in heating and one of the most common calls in January.
$220 – $380 typical
Blower runs but the air is cold
Often a failed ignitor or a gas valve that is not opening. Sometimes it is only a thermostat set to FAN rather than AUTO, which costs nothing to check first.
$250 – $600 typical
Nothing happens at all
A tripped breaker, a blown low-voltage transformer, a safety switch on a full condensate pan, or a door switch left open after a filter change.
$180 – $550 typical
Heat pump running constantly in the cold
Below about 35°F a heat pump leans on auxiliary heat, and a failed defrost board or reversing valve makes it run without ever catching up. Expensive to ignore — the strip heat is what your bill notices.
$350 – $1,400 typical
A bang or boom when it lights
Delayed ignition — gas pooling before it catches. Treat this as urgent rather than annoying: it stresses the heat exchanger, and a cracked exchanger is a carbon monoxide problem, not a comfort one.
$250 – $900 typical
Some rooms warm, others freezing
Usually airflow rather than the furnace: a blocked return, a closed damper, or undersized ductwork in a converted upper floor. Common in DC rowhouses split into units.
$180 – $1,200 typical
Try these first — they’re free
Genuinely. Three of these fix the problem often enough that we’d rather tell you than take your $89.
- 01Check the thermostat is on HEAT, set above room temperature, and has working batteries
- 02Change the filter — a clogged one trips the high-limit switch and shuts the furnace down
- 03Make sure the furnace door panel is fully seated; the safety switch behind it cuts power
- 04Check the breaker and the switch on the wall by the unit, which looks like a light switch and gets flipped by accident
Still not sorted?
Request in the app and a verified company usually accepts within a few minutes.
Ranges are indicative of the DC market, not quotes, and not yet drawn from completed NovaAir jobs. Your price is whatever the technician quotes for your system, and you approve it before any work starts.