Calling about a boiler, or writing to the editors
One number and one address are printed on this site, and they reach different people. The number is for heat that has stopped; the inbox is for the pages themselves. Sending a cold house to the wrong one costs a day.
The number
(800) 555-0163 rings a boiler contractor licensed in your state, whose week runs on hot water and steam, gas and oil, cast iron sections and wall hung units. Dial it when the house is going cold, when the burner will not stay lit, when there is water on the floor under the unit, or when you want an annual service visit booked before the season turns.
Somebody answers around the clock through the heating season: a boiler that quits at one in the morning in January keeps no office hours, and neither does the line.
The call is free and commits you to nothing. You settle scope, timing and price directly with that contractor, on paper, before any part gets ordered. Calderwick publishes and holds no trade license; nobody here turns a valve. Should that visit end in booked work, the contractor taking the job sends this desk a flat referral fee for the introduction, settled on their side. Your invoice never carries it, and no company buys a recommendation here.
One more thing worth saying on the page where you decide whether to write to us. Pages on this site start as AI-assisted drafts, and a person carries each one the rest of the way: every figure traced to the manual, the code section or the federal table it came from, and anything that could not be sourced cut before publication. Write to the desk about a number that looks wrong and a person reads it, checks the source and corrects the page. How that process runs is set out in the editorial policy.
Six answers that shorten the call
Have these ready and the call reaches a diagnosis instead of circling.
- Where the thermostat sits, and whether it is actually asking for heat. Push it five degrees above room temperature and listen. A click followed by the boiler waking up is one story; total silence is another. The order to check things in is laid out under no heat from the boiler.
- What the gauge on the boiler reads. A residential hot water system reads 12 psi cold, the figure Weil-McLain's manual calls typical, and a one pipe steam gauge sits far below that. Read the needle out rather than guessing whether it looks normal.
- Whether the burner lights at all. A flame that fires and drops out after seconds points somewhere different from one that never lights, and both differ from a boiler firing away while the house stays cold.
- What it burns. Natural gas, propane, or heating oil, still common across New England and the older Northeast housing stock. Oil brings its own questions about the tank, the filter and the nozzle.
- Roughly how old the system is. The plate on the jacket carries brand, model and often a date code, and a photograph of it saves five minutes.
- Whether any radiators or baseboard are warm. Every emitter stone cold reads differently from one cold room, which is why a single radiator staying cold gets its own diagnostic path.
None of those six asks you to open or unscrew anything: thermostat, gauge, plate and a hand on a radiator is the whole exercise. Gas piping, oil burner adjustment and boiler wiring stay with the professional, and describing what you saw beats reporting what you tried.
When the call comes second
Gas smell means leave, not investigate. Touch no light switch, no thermostat and no phone while you are inside. Walk everybody out and keep going until the house is well behind you, then call 911, and the gas supplier next, standing where you stopped. Nothing indoors is worth a return trip.
A carbon monoxide alarm means fresh air first. Move every person and pet outdoors or to a wide open door, count heads, and dial 911 from out there. Headache, nausea or dizziness that eases once people are outside gets treated as carbon monoxide poisoning until somebody with a meter proves otherwise. Silencing the alarm and going back to bed is how these nights turn fatal.
A relief valve discharging steam or hot water is not something to plug. The valve is doing exactly what it was built to do, and on a residential hot water boiler it is usually stamped to open around 30 psi. Never cap it, screw a fitting into the outlet, or wedge the lever shut. Keep everybody away from the pipe running down off it, since what leaves that outlet is scalding, and put the call through. What usually stands behind an open valve is covered under boiler pressure and the relief valve.
What the line will not do
The contractor answering has never read these articles and has no channel back to this desk. Nobody prices a boiler replacement over the phone either: sizing and cost follow a look at the house, the venting and the piping already there.
Writing to the desk
Mail sent to [email protected] reaches the editors who write and fact check what is published here. Use that address for a price band that reads wrong, a source you want named, a reprint or press query, a state data right you mean to exercise, or a page that will not work with your assistive software.
No repair is booked through that address. Editing runs on a slower clock than heating work, which is exactly why the telephone sits above it.
When an answer comes back
Mail is read on weekdays. Most gets a written response within three working days, and a message sent late on Friday will be picked up Monday. Corrections jump the queue.
How to get a correction acted on
Send the page URL and quote the sentence word for word, so both sides argue over the same line and not a summary of it. Say what is off, and point at a document that reads differently. Boiler manuals, ASME stampings, model code text, state licensing boards and federal agency data are what settles a dispute here. An objection that stands up gets the page rewritten and dated; where it fails, a written reply explains why the sentence stays put.
Privacy and accessibility
Lead with privacy or accessibility in the subject line and the note reaches the right pair of hands without a sorting step. State data rights belong here, and so does any page that failed you with a keyboard, with magnification or with voice control. Plain description beats formal wording.
If you were looking for a plumbing company in Texas
You reached a publication about boilers instead. The address of this site was bought from its previous owner and used to belong to a plumbing business in Texas with a similar name. Calderwick is unconnected to that company, does no plumbing work, and cannot pass a message to them. The email above reaches editors who write about heating equipment, and the phone number reaches a heating contractor near you.
No form, no address, and the reason
Everything reaches Calderwick through one of those two contacts. Nothing here asks you to fill in fields, no live chat box opens in the corner, and no widget offers to ring you back. Both sit on every page, so neither hides behind a submit step. There is no street address either: Calderwick keeps no office that could take delivery of post, and inventing one to look established would put a false line in the footer.