Top-rated independent heating and cooling across central Arkansas and the Arkansas River Valley
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. Once the house has been cleared by responders, we handle the heating repair side across Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.
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Rock City Air Systems service team · field-reviewed before publishing
The First Five Minutes, In Order
1. Get every person and pet outside, into fresh air. Do not stop to gather things. 2. Leave the door open behind you if you can do it without going back in. 3. From outside, or from a neighbour's house, call 911 or your gas utility emergency line. Both will come out. 4. Stay outside until responders tell you the house is clear. 5. If anyone has a headache, nausea, dizziness, confusion or is unusually sleepy, tell the dispatcher on that first call. Those are carbon monoxide symptoms and they need medical attention, not fresh air alone. Only after all that do you start thinking about the furnace.
What Not To Do
Do not open every window and go back to bed. Airing out the house hides the reading and the source keeps producing. Do not silence the alarm and wait to see if it sounds again. Do not go back inside to look at the furnace, the water heater or anything with a burner. Do not light a match, strike a lighter or flip switches if you also smell gas. Do not run cars, generators or grills in a garage, breezeway or under a carport, attached or not. And do not assume a low reading is a false alarm. Let the responders put a meter on it.
Where Carbon Monoxide Usually Comes From
In the homes we work on across the region, carbon monoxide almost always traces back to combustion that is not venting the way it should. A cracked heat exchanger in a gas furnace. A flue pipe that has separated, rusted through or been crushed in an attic. A blocked chimney or vent cap, sometimes from a bird nest. A gas water heater backdrafting because the house is pulling harder than the vent can push. Older homes with equipment tucked into closets and attics are common candidates, especially where a bath fan or range hood competes for the same air. Space heaters and generators used indoors are the fast, dangerous version.
When To Call Us
Call us after responders have been out and cleared the building, or once the gas utility has red-tagged and shut off your heating equipment. That red tag means the system stays off until a technician inspects and repairs it. We come out for heating repair and furnace repair, inspect the heat exchanger, check the flue and vent connections end to end, test draft, and look at combustion air. If the equipment can be repaired safely we will tell you what it takes. If it cannot, we will say that plainly rather than patch it. We work with homeowners in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.
Keeping It From Happening Again
Put a carbon monoxide alarm on every level of the house and outside each sleeping area. Test them monthly and replace the batteries on a schedule you will actually remember. Most alarms have an end-of-life date printed on the back, usually seven to ten years out, and an expired alarm is a dead alarm. Get combustion equipment looked at before heating season, not during the first cold snap. Keep the area around your furnace and water heater clear of stored boxes. If you use a generator during an outage, run it well away from the house with the exhaust pointed away from doors and windows.
CO Alarm Sounding — common questions
My alarm chirped once and stopped. Is that carbon monoxide?
A single chirp every minute or so is usually a low battery or an expired unit, not a detection. A real alarm is a loud repeating pattern that keeps going. If you are unsure, treat it as real and go outside first.
Can carbon monoxide come from an electric heat pump?
No. Carbon monoxide comes from burning fuel, so straight electric heat pumps and electric furnaces do not produce it. Dual fuel systems with a gas furnace backup can, and so can gas water heaters, fireplaces and attached garages.
The gas utility shut off my furnace. Can you turn it back on?
Not until it has been inspected and repaired. We will come out, find why it was tagged, check the heat exchanger and venting, and repair what we can. The system stays off until it tests safe.
How it works
- Step 1
Tell us the symptom
Call or fill out the quote form and describe what the system is doing. Warm air, short cycling, water on the floor, a smell, a noise. That detail tells us what parts to load on the truck.
- Step 2
We diagnose on site
A technician checks the thermostat, the electrical side, airflow through the filter and coil, refrigerant behaviour and the ductwork. You hear what we found in plain language before anything gets replaced or repaired.
- Step 3
You approve the fix
We explain the repair, what it costs and what happens if you wait a season. Nothing gets done without your go-ahead, and we tell you honestly when a repair no longer makes sense.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quote before work starts
Why homeowners call us
- We know humid-climate systemsAcross the region the real enemy is moisture. Systems here run long hours pulling water out of the air, and that shows up as frozen coils, clogged drains and mildew smells. We diagnose for humidity, not just temperature.
- Mixed gas and heat pump workPlenty of homes we visit run a heat pump with gas backup, and the two have to hand off cleanly. We troubleshoot both sides, including defrost boards, reversing valves, ignitors and heat exchanger concerns.
- Attic ductwork is our daily breadMid-century homes often have ducts running through attics that hit brutal temperatures. Crushed runs, disconnected boots and leaking joints steal cooling before it reaches the room. We find them instead of blaming the equipment.
- Repair before replaceA capacitor, a contactor, a blower motor or a clogged drain line fixes a lot of the calls we take. We would rather fix what you have and tell you plainly when the numbers stop working.
- All major brands, gas & electricFrom Carrier and Trane to Lennox, Goodman, Rheem and Bryant, serviced independently.
- Straight answersNot worth fixing? We say that out loud, and often it saves you the visit fee.
About this guide
Checked everything on the list and it still acts up?
Report what you saw during the checks and we handle the rest. A minute to book.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quotes
- All major brands
- Gas & electric
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