Emergency service, around the clock
Something is wrong and it is the middle of the night. Here is what happens when you call Wahl at two in the morning. A live person picks up, takes down what is going on, and puts it in front of a technician. Not an answering service. Not voicemail. We have been family owned in Pittsburgh since 1980, and the phone is answered at every hour of every day, for heating, cooling, and plumbing.
A real person answers, and the call goes to a technician
Call our number at 2am and a live call center picks up. That person is not reading from a message pad. They enter your job in ServiceTitan, the software our company runs on, and it routes to a technician. Your information goes straight into the same system our techs work out of every day, so nothing gets retyped or lost between a message slip and a morning callback.
From there the job goes to the technician on call for the right trade, so a burst supply line does not get handed to a furnace tech and a dead furnace does not get handed to a plumber. If what you are describing is gas, or smoke, or anything the fire department should see before we do, the person on the phone will say so before anything else, and we will still be here once your house has been cleared.
When you get someone on the line, the more you can tell them, the better prepared the technician arrives.
- Your address, and the best number to call back if the line drops
- What is happening in plain words: no heat, water running down a wall, no hot water since yesterday
- Whether anyone in the house is very young, elderly, or health compromised. Say it up front, it matters to how we handle the call
- Whether you have already shut anything off
- The brand and rough age of the equipment if you know it, or a photo of the data plate
- Whether this has happened before, and what was done about it last time
What we treat as an emergency, and what can wait until tomorrow
We would rather talk you out of a midnight visit than sell you one. A real emergency is something unsafe, something damaging your house, or something that leaves people without heat, cooling, or hot water when they cannot go without it. Kids, elderly parents, and anyone health compromised in the house move a call up the list.
And then there is the other category. If you have four toilets in your house and one of them is clogged, we will see you tomorrow. We are not running a tune up at one in the morning. Saying that costs us a night call and keeps the after hours rate off your bill, and we sleep fine about the trade.
If you are not sure which category you are in, call and describe it. That conversation costs you nothing, and the answer might be that morning is soon enough.
- A suspected gas leak. Call 911 and the gas company first, see below
- Water actively leaking, a burst or split line, or water coming through a ceiling
- No heat, especially in a cold snap, or with kids, elderly, or health compromised people in the house
- No cooling in real heat, for the same reason
- No hot water at all
- Sewage or drain water backing up into the house
- Not this: a tune up at one in the morning, when the same visit tomorrow does the same job
If you smell gas, call 911 and the gas company before you call us
We are a 24/7 heating, cooling, and plumbing company. We are not the emergency responder for a live gas leak, and we are not going to pretend otherwise while gas is collecting in your house. The fire department and the gas utility have crews, equipment, and authority we do not have. Call them first.
Call 911 first, then call the utility. Two gas utilities serve our area, and their own instructions are the authority on what to do, so use their numbers and their safety pages. Peoples Natural Gas has a 24 hour emergency line at 1-800-400-4271. Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania has a 24 hour emergency line at 1-888-460-4332. Make both calls from outside, and stay outside.
Here is the part most people are never told. Natural gas has no smell of its own. Utilities add an odorant called mercaptan so a leak announces itself as rotten eggs. It works, but the strength of the smell is not a reliable measure of how serious the leak is. Odorant can fade in older pipe, and a head cold or a competing smell in the house can knock out your ability to detect it. If you think you smell gas, act like you do. And do not talk yourself out of the call because the smell is faint. Columbia Gas publishes this on its own safety page: it will send someone to check the source of the odor free of charge, whether or not there turns out to be a leak. The hesitation that gets people hurt is not wanting to bother anybody over a smell that might be nothing. That call is exactly what the number is for.
The meter is the dividing line, and most homeowners have never been told where it falls. The utility owns and maintains the main in the street and the service line running to your house, up to and including the meter itself. Everything past the meter belongs to you: the black pipe and flexible connectors inside your walls and under your floors, the shutoffs at each appliance, and the furnace, water heater, range, dryer, and fireplace they feed. If the utility shuts your gas off at the meter and tells you the problem is on the house side, that is the moment to call us.
That house side is our work. Gas line repair and replacement, appliance gas piping, pressure and leak testing after a repair, permits, and relighting and checking appliances once service is restored. We will not go in ahead of the fire department or the utility, and we will not ask you to sit and wait on us while there is gas in the building.
- Get everyone out, pets included, and warn anyone nearby on your way
- Do not stop to open windows. Just go, and leave the door open behind you
- Do not touch light switches, appliances, the doorbell, or a flashlight
- Do not use any phone until you are well away from the building
- Call 911, then call the gas utility, from outside
- Do not start a car in an attached garage, and do not use the garage door to get out
- Do not go looking for the leak, and do not turn any valve
- Stay out until the fire department or the utility tells you it is safe to go back in
- Watch and listen too: hissing or roaring, bubbling in standing water, a line of dead brown grass over the yard
No heat, no cooling, no hot water, water where it should not be
No heat is at the top of the list in a Pittsburgh January. Before you dial, two things are worth thirty seconds: the thermostat, set to heat with fresh batteries, and the switch on or beside the furnace that looks like an ordinary light switch and gets flipped off by anyone carrying laundry past it. A filter packed solid can choke airflow badly enough to shut a furnace down on its own. None of that is embarrassing to check, and if it turns out to be one of them, you just saved yourself a night visit.
No hot water splits cleanly by fuel. On a gas water heater, the tank is either not firing or not holding temperature. On an electric unit, it is often an element or a thermostat. Either way, note whether you have zero hot water or a little that runs out fast, because those are different problems, and telling us which one narrows what we pull off the truck before we roll.
Water is the one that gets expensive by the hour. A supply line under pressure will do more damage in a night than most people expect, and unlike a drain problem it does not stop on its own. If you know where your main water shutoff is, you can cut the damage down to what has already happened while you wait. If you do not know where yours is, find it tonight, before you need it, and ask the technician to confirm it and tag it next time we are in your house.
Drains are where the line gets drawn. A single slow or clogged fixture, when the rest of the house is draining fine, is a tomorrow problem, and we will say so on the phone. Water or sewage backing up into the house is a different animal, because now it is water where it should not be, and that belongs on the list above. If you are not sure which one you have, describe what you are seeing and we will tell you which it is.
After hours costs more, and what a night call can get done
We charge more after hours than we do during the day. That is standard in this trade, and we put it in front of you here rather than leave you to find it out on the phone at three in the morning. Our pricing is flat rate either way. You get the price in writing before the work starts.
The other thing about nights: the supply houses are closed. Our trucks carry the parts that fail most often, so plenty of night calls do get finished that night. But some jobs at 2am are stabilize now, finish tomorrow, because the part that broke is not on the truck and no counter opens until morning. When that is the situation, we will tell you on the phone or at the door, not after we have your card.
Which leads to the advice we give people most often. If the problem can wait until morning without damaging your house or leaving anyone in a bad spot, waiting is usually the better buy. We would rather have you as a customer for twenty years than bill you once at a premium for something that could have waited eight hours.
The truck that pulls into your driveway
Wahl has been family owned in Pittsburgh since 1980, when John Wahl started the company. It is run by the next generation now. We are 55 team members, more than 40 trucks, and an 87,000 square foot facility on six acres in Oakdale. That scale is the reason the night phone gets answered by a person at all. It takes a real crew to cover the clock.
Licensed and insured, with a master plumber on staff. PA HIC #PA022302. A+ with the BBB, and 1,522 five-star Google reviews at a 4.8 rating. We are a PRAXIS S-10 member company, which is how we keep training and process current.
On equipment, we are a Rheem Pro Partner, a Mitsubishi Diamond Elite contractor, a Bosch cold climate dealer, and a Trane dealer, and we install Weil-McLain and IBC boilers, Aprilaire indoor air equipment, RGF REME HALO, and NuCalgon iWave. Those are dealer and partner programs with real requirements behind them. They come with training and manufacturer support on the specific equipment sitting in your basement, which counts for more at 2am than it does at noon.
Emergency line, any hour: (412) 276-9245. Nobody wants a reason to use it. Put it in your phone anyway, next to the gas company, and we hope it sits there untouched for years.
Let us reach out to you
Fill out the quick form and we will call you back. For an emergency, call any time at (412) 276-9245.
Questions, answered
Do I really get a live person at 2am, or an answering service?
A live person. Our call center picks up around the clock, takes the details, and enters the job in ServiceTitan, the software our technicians work out of, so it routes to the tech on call for the right trade. If you want to test that, call and ask a question some evening.
How do I know if my problem is a real emergency?
Ask yourself whether it is unsafe, whether it is damaging your house right now, or whether it leaves someone without heat, cooling, or hot water who cannot go without it. Suspected gas, an active water leak, a backup into the house, no heat in a cold snap, no cooling in real heat, and no hot water all qualify. A single clogged fixture in a house that has others does not. If you are unsure, call and describe it, and we will tell you which one you have.
Does after-hours service cost more than a daytime visit?
Yes. After hours costs more than standard daytime hours, and we say so up front rather than burying it. Either way, the price is in writing and you approve it before any work starts.
I smell gas. Should I call Wahl?
Not first. Get everyone out of the house, then from outside call 911 and Peoples Natural Gas at 1-800-400-4271, or Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania at 1-888-460-4332 if they serve your address. Do not touch switches, do not use a flashlight, do not open windows, and do not go looking for the leak. Do not sit on it because the smell is faint either. Columbia Gas says on its own safety page that it will check the source of the odor free of charge whether or not there is a leak. Call us after the utility or the fire department has made your home safe, when the repair turns out to be on your own piping past the meter or on an appliance.
Who is responsible for the gas line, me or the utility?
The meter is the dividing line. The utility owns and maintains the main and the service line running to your house, up to and including the meter. Everything past the meter, the piping inside the house and the appliances it feeds, is yours, and that is the side we work on.
Will you be able to fix it the same night?
Often, yes. Our trucks carry the parts that fail most. But supply houses are closed overnight, so some repairs are stabilize now and finish when we can get the part. We will tell you which one you are looking at before we start, not after.
Do you handle both plumbing and HVAC on an emergency call?
We do. Wahl runs heating, cooling, and plumbing under one roof, with a master plumber on staff, so you are not calling one company for the burst line and a second one for the furnace it soaked. You also do not need a history with us, a membership, or an account. Plenty of our night calls are first-time customers.
Ready when you are
Call us and get a straight answer. You get the price in writing before the work starts.
Call (412) 276-9245Schedule online