Anyone who has spent a few winters in the River Valley knows how an ice storm goes. A mild week, a forecast that keeps shifting, then freezing rain overnight, limbs coming down on the lines, and the power out for hours or days. The heating calls come in the moment the power comes back. The time to get your heat ready for an ice storm is right now, in late October, while it’s mild and nobody is waiting on a no-heat call.
Pocola sits right on the state line, so the houses here are a mix: homes in town that look a lot like their Fort Smith neighbors, and places on bigger lots out on the county roads with a propane tank, a long gravel drive, and a heat pump out back. Here’s the checklist we’d hand to either one.
Now, While It’s Still Mild
Filters. Change the filter, and buy two spares so you aren’t hunting for one in the middle of a storm.
Thermostat batteries. If your thermostat takes batteries, replace them. A dead thermostat looks exactly like a dead furnace.
Carbon monoxide detectors. Test them, or add them if you don’t have any. Gas furnaces, propane heaters, and generators all make carbon monoxide, and an ice storm is when a lot of households run all three.
Shutoffs. Find the furnace’s service switch, the breakers for the furnace and the outdoor unit, and the gas shutoff. Make sure everyone in the house knows where they are.
The tune-up. Get the heating check done before the cold. A weak part tends to quit on the first hard night, and that’s also when every HVAC company in the area is busiest.
Give the Outdoor Unit Room to Work
A heat pump pulls heat out of the outdoor air across its coil. In winter, frost builds up on that coil, and the unit runs a defrost cycle to melt it off. That’s normal. You may see steam rising off the unit and hear a whoosh when it switches over. What isn’t normal is a unit sealed in a shell of ice.
The usual culprit around here is water from above. A gutter that overflows, or a roof edge that drips right onto the heat pump, will freeze the top and sides solid during freezing rain. Stand where your unit sits and look up. If water lands on it, fix the gutter or add a diverter over that stretch before winter. Trim shrubs back so air can move freely, and keep leaves off the top. Don’t wrap or tarp a heat pump. It runs all winter and needs that airflow to heat the house.
Fuel and Power
If you heat with propane, don’t wait for the forecast to order a fill. During an ice event, delivery trucks struggle with sloped gravel driveways, and every customer calls the same week. Check the gauge now and get on the schedule early.
And this one surprises people: a gas furnace needs electricity to run. The blower, the ignitor, the inducer motor, and the control board all run on power. When the lines go down, the gas furnace goes cold with everything else.
If you plan to use a generator, run it outside, well away from windows, doors, and vents. Never run one in a garage or carport, even with the door open. Never plug a generator into a wall outlet to feed the house. A transfer switch installed by a licensed electrician is the safe way to run a furnace on a generator, and it protects the line crews working to get your power back.
During the Storm
If ice builds up on the heat pump, let the defrost cycle do its job. Don’t chip at the ice with a scraper or a hammer. The coil fins are thin aluminum, and puncturing a tube means a refrigerant leak. If the unit is completely iced over and isn’t clearing itself, switch the thermostat to emergency heat to keep the house warm, and give us a call.
High-efficiency furnaces vent through two white PVC pipes on an outside wall or the roof. Ice and drifting snow can block them, and the furnace will shut down on a safety switch. When it’s safe to step outside, make sure they’re clear.
If you use space heaters, plug them straight into a wall outlet, not an extension cord or power strip, and keep them three feet from anything that can burn. Never use an oven, a grill, or a camp stove to heat the house.
When the Power Comes Back
Power often flickers on and off a few times while crews work. During the outage, set the thermostat to OFF. Once the power has been steady for a few minutes, turn it back to HEAT. That spares the equipment a string of hard starts.
If the furnace doesn’t come back on, check the breaker and the service switch, then look for a blink code on the control board. Wi-Fi thermostats sometimes lose their connection or schedule and need to be set again.
🛠 What we do: a fall heating visit goes after the parts that tend to fail on the first hard night. On a furnace, we clean and test the flame sensor, check the ignitor and safeties, look over the heat exchanger and venting, and measure gas pressure and temperature rise. On a heat pump, we check the defrost controls, refrigerant charge, and the backup heat strips that carry the house when the heat pump can’t keep up. While we’re outside, we’ll look at where your gutters drain and whether the unit sits high enough off the ground.
Do I need to cover my heat pump for winter?
No. A heat pump heats your home all winter and needs open airflow. Keep debris off the top and keep water from dripping onto it. If you have a gas furnace with a separate air conditioner, leave the outdoor unit unwrapped too. A full wrap traps moisture and gives mice a winter home.
Do I need a whole-house generator to keep the heat on?
Not necessarily. A gas furnace’s blower and controls need far less power than a heat pump, and a properly sized portable generator connected through a transfer switch can run one. Heat pumps and electric heat strips draw a lot more, so if that’s how you heat, plan for a bigger generator and talk sizing over with a licensed electrician.
Do I need a tune-up if the system ran fine last winter?
“It ran fine last winter” is how a lot of no-heat calls start. A visit now catches the weak ignitor, the dirty flame sensor, or the failing part before the storm finds it.
Ready for Ice Season in Pocola
Clark HVAC is a family-owned, licensed and insured HVAC company based in Spiro, and Pocola is close to home for us. Call before the first ice storm and we’ll check your system while there’s still room on the schedule. If something does go out in a storm, we take emergency calls too. After-hours work is billed at an overtime rate, and we’ll quote it before we roll.
📞 Call Now: 918-839-3734
Straight answers. Fair pricing. Clean work.