Winter has already set in here in the North East, U.S. and so far this season it has been pretty rough for us. Just last week we got hit with a 2-day freezing rain, sleet and ice event that knocked down several trees on our property. On top of that, we lost phone service and electricity for 7 hours. Brrr…it got pretty cold in here that day!
A few days ago I woke up at 5 AM and was freezing my butt off. Seriously, I was so cold that I wrapped myself up in my bed quilt and hobbled to the thermostat. It stated that it was 49 degrees in here and I thought to myself…how is that possible? We have the heat on!
I proceeded to get my husband out of bed and he headed down to the basement to look at the furnace. Low and Behold…the furnace was not working! Seriously, we have no clue on when it stopped but we are assuming that it was hours before I woke up and noticed that we didn’t have any heat in our home.
So, Who do you call when you have emergency home repairs? Are any of you HomeServe USA Fans? Have any of you used that company for your emergency home repairs? I would love to know.
Anyway, it took a few hours but we finally got our furnace fixed and it took several additional hours for our house to heat up again. I was miserable to say the least! I do know this…next time around we will be prepared and will call a company to come out right away to make our home repairs!
I’ve never used them. I have a friend who is such a perfectionist but looks for a reasonable price, so when he gives me a reference, I hire them without a second thought, and they have always been great. Over the years I have amassed a list (and a back up list) of people to call for all sorts of things…plumber, electrician, handyman, etc. A good place to look for good work at a fair price is….firemen….because they work so many days on and off and have so much down time many use it to study a trade. I’ve found an HVAC guy and a carpenter (referred from a friend of mine married to a fireman) that way.
When I had a house I called my neighbor, who I also worked with. I hate strange people in my home. Now that I rent, I call the maintenance man and made it a point to talk with him to feel comfortable around him. I honestly don’t use my heating or air conditioning here in LA. I have severe dry eyes so just tough it out with bundled clothes or none, ha ha. I would invest in a service though if I had a house with issues.
We do not have a lot of money right now so we try to avoid having to call professionals. We are blessed with having very handy neighbors though. We had a pipe burst in tha attic a few days before Thanksgiving and I was almost in tears. The Plumbers estimate was several hundred dollars but our neighbor came over, had a look at it, gave is instructions as to what we needed to buy at the home improvement store. He even helped my boyfriend every step of the way. It ended up taking about 1 hour and costed us around $15.
This neighbor will definately be high up on our Christmas list.
We haven’t used HomeServiceUSA, but the oil company comes with a repair service whom we have called from time to time. I don’t know how you can be prepared for what happened in advance if you don’t realize that the heat is out until it is too late. On really cold days I go down and check the furnace from time to time to make sure it is functioning properly.
I haven’t used HomeServiceUSA – but we are extremely lucky to live in a condo building where the maintenance staff are top-notch. They will fix almost anything for us!
Honestly it all depends on our bank account balance at the time. Most of the time we do it ourselves if at all possible. Next we call our neighbor who is real handyman around the house and cars. He has saved our butt so many times! I think the only time we called a professional that I can remember was when the A/C went out and it was about 100 in the house. Then we couldn’t afford the estimate and ended up being able to fix ourselves based on what he said was wrong. Got lucky that time!