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Polar Express HVAC & Refrigeration

Heating

Heating repair in San Antonio, with the safety check built in.

Polar Express provides heating repair for homes across the San Antonio metro, with 24/7 emergency dispatch and same-day service on most repair calls. One flat-rate price is approved in writing before work begins for furnaces, electric heat, or heat pumps, with carbon monoxide and, on gas equipment, combustion checks. TDLR license TACLA00127982C.

A furnace that has not run since March rarely fails politely. We find what quit, test combustion and carbon monoxide, and hand you one price.

Call 24/7 · (210) 376-0781Book Service
  • Licensed TACLA00127982C
  • Since 2023
  • 4.9 Google rating

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Tell us what's going on. We'll call you back, usually within 15 minutes during business hours.

No obligation. No high-pressure sales. We'll text you a confirmation.

A San Antonio furnace spends most of the year switched off. It sits from roughly March until the first real norther, collecting attic dust and occasionally collecting a nest, while the air conditioner bolted to the same ductwork runs itself ragged. Then a front crosses, the overnight low falls off a cliff, and that furnace is asked to work perfectly on its first attempt of the season. It is why the no-heat calls in this city pile into two or three nights a winter, and why so many of them turn out to be an oxidized flame sensor, a cracked hot surface igniter, or a safety switch doing precisely the job it was installed to do. Polar Express repairs residential heating on every brand across the metro, gas and electric alike, and every heating visit includes a carbon monoxide and combustion safety check. The company is locally owned and owner-operated, has worked this market since 2023, and holds Texas license TACLA00127982C.

What we handle

Heating Repair covers more than one failure.

The complaint that gets called in is rarely the whole job. These are the things a technician is actually looking at on this equipment.

  • Ignition, burners, and flame sensing

    Hot surface igniters, spark ignition, gas valves, and the flame sensor that shuts a perfectly healthy furnace down the moment it stops seeing fire clearly.

  • Carbon monoxide and combustion

    Heat exchanger inspection, draft and venting, and a carbon monoxide reading taken while the burners are lit. Part of every heating call, never an add-on line.

  • Electric furnaces and heat strips

    Sequencers, elements, limit switches, and the breakers behind an air handler that pushes room-temperature air around the house and calls it heat.

  • Heat pump heating faults

    Reversing valves, defrost boards, outdoor sensors, and auxiliary heat that either never engages when it should or refuses to shut itself back off.

  • Blowers, motors, and airflow

    Blower motors, wheels packed with dust, run capacitors, and the restricted airflow that trips a high limit and looks exactly like a dead furnace.

  • Boards, switches, and inducers

    Control boards, pressure switches, inducer motors, rollout switches, and the low-voltage wiring faults that turn an intermittent problem into a ghost hunt.

Signs and causes

What you are seeing, and what usually causes it.

Read these before you call. Knowing which one matches gets the right parts on the truck, and a couple of them are worth acting on in the next ten minutes.

  • The system blows, but the air is not warm

    Air arriving at room temperature usually means the heat source never lit or never energized while the blower carried on anyway. On a gas furnace that points at ignition or a lockout, on an electric system it points at sequencers or elements, and on a heat pump it can simply be a defrost cycle that has run long.

  • It fires, runs a few minutes, then shuts down

    Short cycling on a gas furnace is nearly always a safety device doing its job. A dirty flame sensor stops proving flame, a blocked flue trips the pressure switch, and restricted airflow drives the heat exchanger past its high limit. All three stop the burners on purpose, and all three come back until somebody corrects the cause.

  • The burner will not light at all

    A furnace that hums, clicks, or draws for a moment and then goes quiet is running an ignition sequence it cannot finish. A failed igniter, a pressure switch that will not make, an interrupted gas supply, and a lockout after repeated attempts all end at the same silent burner, and they get told apart at the control board rather than by trial and error.

  • Something smells wrong when the heat runs

    A faint hot-dust smell on the first burn of the season is the summer's dust burning off the heat exchanger, and it fades within the hour. Burning plastic or hot electrical insulation is not that, and it wants the system off and a phone call. If what you smell is gas, leave the building before you do anything else.

  • It runs almost constantly and the house still drifts down

    Heating equipment here is rarely undersized enough to justify running flat out, so continuous operation through a cold snap points at capacity that is not arriving: duct leakage into a cold attic, a burner section running dirty, electric heat where only one stage comes on, or a heat pump leaning on backup it should not need yet.

What it costs

You approve the price before the work starts.

No honest heating repair price fits on a web page, because "my heater is out" covers a flame sensor a technician can clean at the equipment and a heat exchanger finding that ends the conversation about repairing anything. What is fixed is the sequence. A technician diagnoses the system in your home, explains what failed and what it means for safety, and writes one flat-rate figure for the repair. Nothing gets opened up, ordered, or billed until you have looked at that figure and said yes. If the safe answer is that this furnace should not run again, you hear that plainly, with the reasoning, rather than as the opening line of a sales pitch.

Request a quoteApply the $50 off repair offer

What moves the number

  • Which component failed, and whether it rides on the truck or has to be ordered
  • Gas, electric, or heat pump, since the three fail in completely different places
  • Whether the fault sits in the equipment, in the ductwork, or in the thermostat wiring between them
  • Where the furnace lives, because an attic install is a different afternoon than a garage closet
  • Whether anything found during the safety check has to be corrected before the system can run
  • A scheduled appointment against an after-hours call in the middle of a freeze

How the job runs

What happens between your call and a working system.

  1. Step 1

    What we ask before the truck leaves

    Whether the thermostat is calling and the blower is turning, whether the system is gas, electric, or a heat pump, and whether anything smells or has tripped. Those answers decide which igniters, sensors, and boards ride along.

  2. Step 2

    Diagnose, then test the safety side

    Ignition sequence, gas pressure, temperature rise, static pressure, amp draw, and a carbon monoxide reading with the burners firing. The safety half happens whether or not it has anything to do with the complaint you called about.

  3. Step 3

    One flat rate, then the work

    You see the number for the fix before it starts. Igniters, flame sensors, capacitors, sequencers, and common control boards travel with the technician, so most heating calls in this market close on the first visit.

  4. Step 4

    Watch a full heat cycle before leaving

    The system has to light, run, satisfy, and shut down cleanly with somebody standing in front of it. You get the readings, and anything that looks like next winter's repair gets named now instead of discovered in January.

Questions

Straight answers, before you call.

Still not covered here? The person who answers the phone can usually settle it in a sentence, day or night.

Call (210) 376-0781

A furnace pushing room-temperature air is nearly always a case of the blower running while the burners are not, and the usual reasons are an oxidized flame sensor, a failed igniter, a tripped safety, or a thermostat left on fan rather than auto. A technician confirms which one at the control board, where a failed ignition sequence leaves a diagnostic code behind. Resetting the system over and over in the meantime only stacks more failed attempts onto the same fault.

In San Antonio the two we make most often are cleaning or replacing a flame sensor and replacing a hot surface igniter, both small parts on an otherwise sound furnace. Equipment that sits idle for nine months and then works hard for a few weeks is unusually rough on exactly those two components. Neither is dangerous in itself, and both leave a house cold until somebody with a meter shows up.

No, and the reason is worth understanding. A furnace that stops on its own has been stopped by a safety device rather than by a breakdown, and pressure switches, rollout switches, and high limits exist to halt combustion when venting, airflow, or heat exchanger temperature leaves a safe range. Cycling the power repeatedly asks the equipment to keep running into whatever tripped it, which is the one scenario where a heating fault turns into a safety problem.

Yes, and a large share of homes in this metro are electric rather than gas, especially newer subdivisions and anything paired with a heat pump. Electric heat fails at sequencers, elements, limit switches, and the high-amperage connections feeding them, which is a completely different diagnosis from a gas furnace even though the complaint sounds identical from the hallway. We stock parts for both and do not treat electric heat as the lesser system.

We show you what we found, shut the furnace down, and lay out what your options genuinely are, because a cracked heat exchanger can let combustion byproducts into the air the house breathes. It is not a finding anybody should take lightly, and not one we hand out casually. A crack normally ends in a replacement rather than a part, so you get the evidence, the reasoning, and a written recommendation, and wanting a second opinion from another licensed contractor is entirely reasonable.

Polar Express provides one written flat-rate price for heating repair in San Antonio, and the homeowner approves it before work begins. The total depends on whether the system is gas, electric, or a heat pump, which component failed, and whether the carbon monoxide and combustion safety check finds a condition that must be corrected before operation. The $50 off any repair offer applies, one per household, and cannot combine with other offers.

Polar Express offers same-day service on most heating repair calls across San Antonio, backed by 24/7 emergency dispatch on nights, weekends, and holidays. The person answering the phone gives a real arrival window based on the active route, weather demand, and whether the household has no heat or a safety concern.

Related services

The work that usually comes with this one.

Nearby

We run this service across the San Antonio metro. These are three of the areas we cover, and the full list lives on the service areas page.

One call, day or night.

Licensed, locally owned, and answering the phone around the clock. You get the diagnosis in plain language and the price before the work starts.

Call 24/7 · (210) 376-0781Book Service