HVAC Repair in Portland, OR
Homes here need heat from October through June and cooling from August through August. If your system quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Multnomah County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Nine months of heat, one month of cooling
Your furnace is the machine doing most of the work here. Heat runs from October through June, and on winter nights averaging 34°F it cycles on and off for hours at a time. That kind of use wears on the igniter and the flame sensor long before the cabinet looks old. Cooling only has to answer for August, with afternoons around 76°F, so a strained air conditioner shows up as the exception here, not the rule.
Nearly half the homes in the area heat with electricity, so a power outage becomes a heating problem too. The region has logged 29 winter storms and 17 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and across Oregon, 20% of households went at least 24 hours without power in 2024. When the power drops on a cold night, an electric furnace stops with it, and the house starts losing heat right away.
- 9 months
- October through June, your system heats
- 1 months
- August through August, it cools
- 34°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 76°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Oregon requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
The Construction Contractors Board tests and licenses the contractor, not the individual job. That license stays tied to the business, so it carries over from one repair to the next rather than getting issued fresh each time someone comes to your house.
For a heating and cooling repair, that license is what stands behind the work. If the job comes to less than $1,000, Oregon does not require a licensed contractor to do it, but above that threshold the contractor working on your system should hold that CCB license.
Source: Oregon Legislative Assembly
- Why is my heat not working?
- Start with the thermostat. Make sure it is set to heat and the temperature is set above the room temperature, since a setting bumped by accident is the most common reason heat does not come on. Check the breaker next, since a tripped breaker will shut the whole system down with no warning. If those are fine, listen for the furnace trying to start. A few clicks followed by silence usually means the igniter is failing. If you hear nothing at all, the problem may be electrical or in the thermostat wiring itself, and that calls for a contractor to trace it down.
- Why is my system running but not cooling the house?
- Check the air filter first. A filter clogged with dust blocks airflow across the coil, and without enough airflow the coil can ice over and stop cooling the air at all. Next, look at the outdoor unit and clear away anything blocking it, since the coil out there needs open air around it to release heat. If the filter is clean and the outdoor unit is clear but the house still is not cooling, the system may be low on refrigerant, and that is not something to check yourself. A contractor will need to test the charge and find the leak.
- What can I check before calling for HVAC repair?
- Check the thermostat settings, the breaker, and the filter. A wrong setting or a tripped breaker looks exactly like a broken system but costs nothing to fix once you spot it. A dirty filter can cause problems that look serious, like a furnace that overheats and shuts off or an AC that freezes up, when the fix is just a new filter. If those check out and the system still is not working, that points to something inside it, and a contractor will need to look at it and price the job for your house.