In hot demand: heating experts and plumbers

By Jaedda Armstrong

For the past couple of weeks, Becky Young has dressed in layers and wrapped herself in blankets to keep warm in her icy house.

In the three years she's lived in her Chesapeake home, she's never had a problem with the heating system. Until now.

"When the cold snap hit," Young said, "that's when I realized I didn't have any heat."

Last week she called Hawkins Heating & Air Conditioning, only to learn she'd have to wait even longer to get heat. The company made a house call Tuesday and discovered that her system need s to be replaced, which could take four more days.

Throughout Hampton Roads, the bitter cold has stressed furnaces and heat pumps and has frozen pipes. Many heating technicians and plumbers are overwhelmed with calls. Some are even referring calls to other companies that might not be so busy.

Hawkins Heating & Air Conditioning in Virginia Beach has been swamped with service calls ever since temperatures in Hampton Roads dropped below freezing a few weeks ago. Its call volume has doubled from about 15 on a typical winter day, said Eric Hawkins, who has run the company since 1997.

Hawkins left two portable heaters with Young as he headed for one of the 10 other calls he needed to make Tuesday. He's lost track of how many portables he's handed out, he said.

"We expected it to be busy, but not this busy," he said.

Calls to Norfolk Plumbing Inc. are running 35 percent above last year, said Jeff Hux, the company president. Many of the calls, he said, are for frozen pipes.

His staff of 14 has been stretched thin, dealing with a backlog of nearly 50 jobs, Hux said. "Some customers are seeing a delay of a day or two or even the next week."

Norfolk Plumbing also is still dealing with jobs left over from the November nor'easter, Hux said.

Frozen and even ruptured pipes also have kept Budget Plumbing's three-person staff busy.

"This has been a harsh winter," said Steven Mann, owner of the Norfolk business.

Last week, he received 10 calls in one day to repair burst pipes. One customer called him at 1 a.m., he said.

"There is a delay, maybe a few days depending on what the problem is," Mann said. But if someone's pipes have burst, he said, his crew drops what it's doing and immediately goes to help if the other calls can wait.

To avoid a potential backlog, the 27-member crew at Russell's Heating and Cooling in Chesapeake has been working overtime and weekends. Compared with last winter, Russell's has seen about a 40 percent increase in repair and replacement calls, said Buddy Smith, the company's owner.

"If my crew didn't volunteer to help out on their off days, we definitely would not be able to get to everyone at a reasonable time," Smith said.

Some of the heating problems could have been avoided if homeowners had checked their systems before the cold weather became severe, Smith said. People should get their systems checked out at least once a year, he said.

Either way, Smith said, many heating and plumbing companies are doing much better than they were last year, so they're not complaining about the workload.

"We're not happy that people are cold," Smith said. "But we're glad that we are keeping busy."

Jaedda Armstrong, (757)222-5846, jaedda.armstrong@pilotonline.com