No heat on a freezing night — or in the middle of a nor’easter — is the one boiler problem that doesn’t wait. This page is the triage order for Beverly: what counts as a true emergency, what to check before you call, and what to do while you wait for the pro. The emergency telephone line runs 24/7; general inquiries run 7 AM–7 PM.
General inquiries: 7 AM–7 PM · Emergency calls: 24/7 · (888) 766-1474
Not everything is a middle-of-the-night call — these are.
Check these before you call — in this order, because storm calls are won or lost here.
1. Power. If the nor’easter took your power, your boiler is not broken — oil burners, circulators, and controls all need electricity. Check the panel for a tripped breaker too; storm surges trip breakers, and a boiler on a tripped circuit looks exactly like a dead boiler. The fix is the grid or the generator, not a service call.
2. Thermostat. Dead batteries and storm-related setting changes cause a real share of “no heat” calls. Confirm it is set to heat and calling for heat before anything else.
3. The oil tank gauge — if you burn oil. If the gauge reads empty or the needle sits below the red, say so on the call — it changes the dispatch from “broken burner” to “needs fuel, then a bleed and restart.”
4. Snow on the vent and intake. Drifts bury direct-vent terminations and condensate drains on outside walls. A blocked vent trips safeties and locks the unit out — clear snow gently from around the pipes (never force anything) and see if the unit recovers.
5. The reset button — once. On oil, one press of the red reset is the limit. Repeated resets flood the chamber with unburned fuel and turn a no-heat call into a soot cleanup. On gas, one reset; if it locks out again, the safety chain is telling you something — call.
Protect the house and the pipes — the pro is coming, the cold is already here.
First, protect the pipes: open cabinet doors under sinks on outside walls, let faucets drip, and keep the thermostat set even if the boiler is not responding — if it recovers, it should find a call for heat waiting. Close off unused rooms and hang blankets over the worst drafty windows in an old colonial; you are buying time, not fixing anything.
Never use the oven, grill, or portable generator indoors for heat. Every storm season brings carbon monoxide injuries from exactly this. Space heaters are a stopgap — keep them clear of everything, and never leave them running unattended. If anyone in the house is elderly, very young, or medically fragile and the house is dropping fast, say so on the call — it affects triage priority.
The call volume nobody schedules.
Nor’easters leave a second wave of boiler problems after the wind dies. Low basements near the water flood — a burner or control that sat in water needs professional eyes before it fires again, even if it looks dry now. Buried vents keep locking units out until the drifts melt or get cleared. Oil deliveries back up for days after a big storm; if your tank was already low, order before the storm hits, not after. And salt spray coats outdoor equipment and exposed fittings — worth a look once things calm down.
If your basement took water, do not restart the boiler yourself — call and describe the flooding. Water-damaged controls and burners fail unpredictably, and this is one of the cases where patience is the safe move.
01915 first, storm routing second.
Emergency coverage runs across 01915 — downtown and the waterfront, the Cove, Ryal Side, North Beverly, Centerville, Montserrat, Beverly Farms, and Prides Crossing — around the clock. During a major storm, you will get honest timing, not a promise: true no-heat calls with freezing temperatures inside the house triage first, and calls queue in order of risk. Describing the situation plainly — fuel type, what the unit is doing, whether the basement flooded, how cold the house is — is the fastest thing you can do to get routed correctly.
Straight answers before you call.
Yes. No heat with temperatures near freezing is exactly what the 24/7 emergency line is for — call (888) 766-1474. You will be triaged by risk, not by the clock: a house dropping toward freezing jumps the queue over a lukewarm radiator.
Once — and only once. A single reset after a lockout is reasonable; repeated resets on oil flood the combustion chamber with unburned fuel and can cause a puffback. If it locks out again after one reset, call and let a pro find the cause.
Check the breaker panel first — storm surges trip breakers, and the boiler circuit is a common one. If the breakers are fine and the unit still won’t fire, treat it as urgent: controls and ignition components do fail in power events, and a house cooling toward freezing doesn’t wait for business hours.
Look at where the vent or intake pipes exit the house — on the outside wall, usually low. If drifted snow is packed around them, clear it gently by hand and keep the area open as the storm continues. A unit that locked out on a blocked vent will often recover once it can breathe again.
Leave the house immediately, don’t touch switches or phones inside, and call the gas utility’s emergency line or 911 from outside. Boiler repair comes after the utility clears the house as safe — never try to relight or reset a gas unit yourself after a gas incident.
The short version, with somewhere to go next.
If the house is cold right now, call (888) 766-1474 — the triage is faster than any page. For the national picture, emergency boiler repair covers what qualifies as an emergency in general terms. Once the crisis is past, the diagnosis page is where the follow-up fault-finding lives, and Beverly is part of the wider Massachusetts coverage area.
Call (888) 766-1474 — the emergency line is 24/7. Describe the symptoms and get triaged by risk, not by the clock.
