Furnace Repair in College Park, Maryland
Prince George's County · 24 hour emergency service
Furnace repair and installation in College Park, where a January no-heat call often means a tenant in a cold house and a landlord who needs it fixed today. We work Old Town, Calvert Hills, Berwyn, Hollywood and the Route 1 corridor.
Why people here call us.
A large share of the furnace calls we take in College Park do not come from the person standing in the cold house. They come from a landlord or a property manager who just got a text from a tenant, needs the heat back on today, and needs it done in a way that holds up if anyone asks questions later.
We work that way: diagnose it properly, document what we found, and either repair it or say clearly why it cannot stay in service. Every gas furnace we touch gets a combustion analysis, a carbon monoxide test in the flue and in the living space, a heat exchanger inspection, and a check of the flue, the draft and the gas pressure.
That is the part that matters in a rental, because a furnace that makes heat is not automatically a furnace that is safe. That is the difference between a fix and a liability. Washington Gas serves most of College Park, and there are electric furnaces and older converted systems near campus.
What College Park homes ask of this job.
College Park holds three very different furnace populations. Around the campus edge in Calvert Hills, Old Town and Lakeland you get 1920s through 1950s bungalows, cape cods and small colonials in 20740, most on their second or third system and many converted into student rentals with bedrooms carved out of attics and basements.
Those houses often have a furnace venting into an old masonry chimney, sometimes shared with a gas water heater, and a duct system that never anticipated the finished attic it is now asked to heat. North of campus in Berwyn, Hollywood, Daniels Park and College Park Woods the stock is 1950s and 1960s ramblers and split-levels with more owner occupancy, better maintained equipment, and the standard mid-century problem of a heating only duct layout with cooling added on later.
Along Baltimore Avenue, the mid-rise apartment buildings of the last fifteen years use fan coils and packaged equipment rather than furnaces at all. The seasonal rhythm here is real: houses sit half empty through August, the first cold snap arrives in November when everyone is back, and the systems nobody checked all fail in the same two weeks.
The problems that keep coming up.
- Furnaces in Old Town and Calvert Hills rentals failing during the first cold week of the semester, after sitting idle in a damp basement all summer.
- Cracked heat exchangers in student rental basements where the filter slot has been empty for a year and the return is pulling dust through the cabinet.
- Attic bedrooms in converted rentals that never warm up because one long supply run through an uninsulated knee wall is doing the entire job.
- Furnaces and gas water heaters sharing an old chimney in Lakeland and Berwyn houses, where weak draft affects both appliances at the same time.
- Frozen and split condensate lines on high efficiency furnaces in unheated basements over winter break, found only when tenants come back in January.
How the appointment runs.
On a no-heat call in a rental we work toward two goals: get the heat back on, and leave a clear record. We check the thermostat and the safeties, watch the ignition sequence, read flame signal and gas pressure, measure temperature rise, and run combustion analysis with carbon monoxide readings.
If the heat exchanger is compromised we say so directly and explain why the unit cannot go back in service, because patching that in a tenant occupied house is not something we do. Access is the practical issue in College Park. Somebody has to let us in, and in student rentals the tenant and the decision maker are usually different people, so give us both contacts when you book.
If there are parking restrictions near campus or along Knox Rd and Baltimore Ave, mention that too, so we can plan around a permit block or a game day.
What decides the scope here.
A no-heat call in a tenant-occupied house has a constraint most heating work does not: the house has to be safe to occupy tonight, and there is a limit to how much of that decision is ours. The mechanical work is ordinary. Igniters, flame sensors, pressure switches, limit switches and thermostats are on the truck and the visit usually ends with heat.
What changes the scope is a finding rather than a part. If combustion analysis or an inspection shows a compromised heat exchanger, that unit does not go back into service in an occupied house, and no amount of scheduling pressure changes it. We will say that clearly, put it in writing, and talk about what temporary heat and a replacement look like.
The other College Park specific factor is the shared masonry chimney common in the older housing near Old Town and Lakeland, where the furnace and the water heater vent together. Replace the furnace with a high efficiency model that vents through the wall and the water heater is left alone in an oversized flue, which is a venting problem that has to be solved as part of the same job rather than noticed later.
When this goes wrong in College Park.
Two dates matter in College Park heating and neither of them is on a weather map. The first genuinely cold night in November is when systems that sat idle since March get asked to run, and it produces a wave of no-heat calls in a single evening. The second is winter break, when houses empty out for weeks in the coldest part of the year.
That is the real risk for an owner here: a furnace that fails on December 22 in an empty house is not a heating problem by the time somebody notices, it is a burst pipe problem. Anyone leaving a property vacant over break should set the thermostat to a low but genuinely heating temperature rather than off, and should have somebody check on it.
The sensible appointment is a fall check in September or October, before the first wave and while the schedule is still open. Combustion analysis, a heat exchanger inspection and a carbon monoxide test are an ordinary weekday hour in October and an emergency in January.
Working in College Park.
Home Comfort Air Services runs out of Silver Spring, at 9737 Mount Pisgah Rd in 20903, which is a straight run to College Park on New Hampshire Ave or the Beltway. Yosef founded the company in 2014 after working as a service technician, and it has stayed family owned. For owners and property managers: we document what we find, we do not condemn equipment we have not tested, and we do not sell a replacement when the answer is a part.
We are NATE certified, Carrier authorized, an ACCA member and BBB accredited with an A+ rating, licensed in Maryland under MD70918. Emergency service runs 24 hours. Repairs are 10% off for military and seniors, and complete system installations carry $150 off.
Common questions.
My tenant has no heat. How fast can you actually get there?
We run 24 hour emergency service, and College Park is a short drive from our Silver Spring office, so a winter no-heat call is the kind of thing we prioritize. What speeds it up most is access. If you confirm somebody will be at the house and tell us who approves the repair, we can often fix it on the same visit.
Do I need carbon monoxide detectors in my rental property?
Maryland requires carbon monoxide alarms in residences with fuel burning appliances, which covers any College Park rental with a gas furnace, boiler or water heater. We check for working alarms as part of a furnace visit and tell you if any are missing or expired. Detectors have a service life, so the date on the unit matters.
The house sat empty all summer. What should I check before winter?
Have the furnace serviced before the first cold night rather than after it. Idle systems collect dust, flame sensors oxidize, condensate traps dry out or grow biofilm, and rodents get into basements and attics. A fall visit covers combustion testing, the heat exchanger, the ignition components and the filter. In a student rental that prevents most November emergencies.
What does Maryland require for carbon monoxide detectors in a rental?
Maryland requires carbon monoxide alarms in homes with fuel burning appliances, and as an owner that obligation is yours rather than your tenant's. The practical points are that they belong on every sleeping level and near the fuel burning equipment, and that the sensors themselves expire, typically in roughly seven to ten years, with the date printed on the housing. We check for working detectors on every heating visit and note it on the invoice. For the specifics of your obligations as a landlord, confirm with the county or your own counsel rather than with us.
My tenant has no heat. How fast can you get there?
Regular hours are Monday to Friday 7:30 AM to 7 PM and Saturday 9 AM to 4 PM, with 24-hour emergency service outside them. What genuinely speeds it up is information: the property address, the tenant's number for access, your authorization limit, and whether there is any secondary heat in the house. What slows it down is arriving to a locked door. On the first cold night of the season everyone is triaging, so tell us if there are children, elderly occupants or no alternative heat at all.
Does a furnace replacement here need a permit?
Yes, through Prince George's County. Furnace replacement is permitted mechanical work and the installation is inspected afterward. We pull it and schedule the inspection as part of the job, stated in the written price. The inspection is worth having on a rental in particular: it puts a second set of eyes on gas piping, venting, combustion air and clearances, and it leaves a record that the work was done properly, which matters if the property changes hands or a claim is ever made.