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Boilers · Repair · Replacement · Tune-ups · Northern Virginia
A boiler tune-up is $69 a system, regularly $99, a repair starts with the $99 diagnostic, and a new boiler runs $9,900 to $16,500 installed. A high-efficiency condensing or combi boiler lands at $12,782 to $16,500. We work on hot water boilers, gas and propane, and install Navien, Weil-McLain and Force.
Price range
$9,900-$16,500
8yrs @ 7.99%
$140/mo
15yrs @ 9.99%
$106/mo
Monthly figures on the starting price, the whole price financed, on approved credit. The lender sets the final terms. How financing works
Tell us what’s going on
Send this and the office calls or texts you back to set a time. Rather pick the day yourself? Book online.
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4.95 stars across 1,131 reviews
Read your own boiler
The eleven things people describe on the phone, and what they usually turn out to be. The first one is a get-out-of-the-house call, and it says so first.
Get everyone out now, then call 911 from outside, and the gas company if you smell gas.
Don’t flip switches or go back in to look at the boiler. Once the fire department clears the house, call us and we’ll find out why it happened.
When the boiler fires and the radiators stay cold, the hot water isn’t moving: usually a stuck circulator pump, a zone valve that won’t open, or air locked in the loop.
Check that the thermostat is calling for heat and the pressure gauge reads above about 12 psi. If both look right, it’s a repair, and the $99 diagnostic finds which part.
A boiler that won’t fire is usually its safeties doing their job: low water, a flame sensor that can’t see the flame, or a lockout after a few failed starts.
Press the reset button once. If it locks out again, leave it off and call: a boiler that keeps locking out is telling you something a reset won’t fix.
Kettling is water flashing to steam inside the heat exchanger, usually because scale or sludge has built up and the water can’t carry the heat away fast enough.
It won’t fix itself, and it gets louder. A flush and a look at the water flow usually sort it out; a badly scaled heat exchanger can mean the boiler is near the end.
Banging is usually air in the system, low water, or a pump pushing against a valve as it shuts. A tick as the heat comes on is usually just pipes growing against the framing as they warm.
Air and low water are worth fixing before the cold week. Ticking is mostly harmless.
Gurgling is air moving through the pipes. Whistling usually means water isn’t flowing through the boiler fast enough, which is close kin to kettling.
Bleed the radiators (how, below). If the gurgle is back within days, something is letting air in, and that’s the repair.
Most home hot water boilers are filled to about 12 psi cold, a little more in a tall house, and should stay under about 24 psi hot. The relief valve opens at 30 to protect the boiler, so a drip means the pressure is climbing.
The usual cause is a waterlogged expansion tank or a fill valve that won’t shut off. Never cap or plug the relief valve. Call us.
Low pressure means water is leaving the system: a leak somewhere, a relief valve that’s been dripping, or air bled out without the water topped back up.
A boiler that keeps losing pressure has a leak, even one you can’t see. Find it before the low water safety shuts the heat off on a cold night.
Cold at the top and warm at the bottom is trapped air: bleed that radiator. A whole radiator or a whole zone cold is usually a stuck valve or zone valve.
Upstairs cold and downstairs fine is usually air collecting at the high point, or a circulator that can’t push the water up there.
Water under a boiler comes from the relief valve, a fitting or pump seal, or the boiler itself. The first three are repairs.
If it’s coming out of the boiler’s own cast iron sections or heat exchanger, that’s the leak that ends a boiler. Turn it off, put a pan down and call.
Short cycling usually means the boiler is too big for the house, the thermostat sits too close to a radiator, or a sensor is reading wrong.
It wears a boiler out early. The diagnostic tells you which, and an oversized old boiler is a good reason to size the next one to the house, not to the old nameplate.
Do it yourself
Air is the most common reason a radiator runs cold at the top, and letting it out is a job you can do with a radiator key.
If the same radiator needs bleeding every week, something is letting air in. That’s a call, not a chore.
What it costs
These are what our own boiler replacements have come to in Northern Virginia, not a national average.
Condensing or combi boiler
$12,782to$16,500
or $213/mo at 0% APR for 60 months
A Navien combi, or a Weil-McLain or Force condensing boiler, venting out the wall. Installed.
Cast iron boiler on the chimney
$9,900to$13,690
or $165/mo at 0% APR for 60 months
Like for like, installed. A chimney liner, when one is needed, is on top.
Boiler tune-up
$69
One system, regularly $99, the same price as a furnace tune-up.
Repair diagnostic
$99
The fault found and the repair priced in writing. You approve it or you don’t.
Monthly figures: 60mo @ 0% APR on each starting price, the whole price financed, on approved credit. Longer plans lower the payment and cost more in total. The lender sets the final terms. How financing works
What moves a job inside the range: how it vents (a chimney that needs a liner, or a new hole in the wall for plastic pipe), how much of the piping around the boiler gets rebuilt, and whether the new boiler makes the hot water too.
Want your own number first? The boiler estimator asks a few questions about yours and shows the range for that job. The long read is what a new boiler costs in Northern Virginia.
Know what you have
Five questions that tell you, and tell us on the phone, what kind of job you’re looking at.
A hot water boiler has a pressure gauge that reads in psi and a temperature gauge. A steam boiler has a glass tube on the side showing a water level. We work on hot water boilers; if yours is steam, we’ll tell you on the phone.
A condensing boiler vents out the wall in white plastic pipe and runs a small drain line. An older cast iron boiler vents up the chimney in metal pipe.
A combi boiler heats the house and makes the hot water from one wall-hung box. Heat only means there’s a separate water heater beside it.
We work on natural gas and propane boilers. Oil we don’t, and a switch off oil to a heat pump or a gas or propane boiler is ours to price.
The date is on the rating plate inside the front cover, or coded into the serial number. The label in our photo says a boiler was converted to propane in January 1994.
Fix it or replace it
The boilers we recommend
Three lines, and the right one depends on how your house vents and where its hot water comes from.
The NCB is Navien’s combi: it heats the house and makes the hot water from one wall-hung box, which frees up the space the water heater took. The NHB is heat only, for a house that keeps its own water heater. Both are condensing, so they vent out the wall in plastic pipe instead of up the chimney.
Weil-McLain makes the cast iron gas boilers on the chimney in a lot of older Northern Virginia basements, the CGa and CGi among them, and condensing boilers like the Ultra, the Evergreen and the Eco Tec. Where a house is set up for cast iron on the chimney, a new Weil-McLain is often the straightest swap. The one in the photo is ours.
Force boilers come through Ferguson, the plumbing and heating supplier, and they’re the third line we recommend. Which of the three fits your house mostly comes down to how it vents and whether you want the hot water from the boiler too, and we’ll tell you which we’d pick.
We service the boilers already in people’s basements too, Peerless included.
How a boiler call goes
Typically the same day or the next day, and we’ll tell you honestly when we can get there. We run 24/7 emergency service.
A real arrival window and a call ahead when the technician is on the way.
The whole system, not just the noisy part: the burner and flame, the safeties, the pressure and the expansion tank, the circulator, the valves and the venting.
Before anything is opened up or ordered. Approve it or decline it, and nobody makes a decline awkward.
If the part is on the van, it’s done that visit. If it isn’t, we order it and book the return.
Who turns up at the door
SwiftPro is family owned, based on Lafayette Center Drive in Chantilly, and every technician who comes to your house is ours.
Furnace or heat pump instead? That’s heating repair. More about the people: about SwiftPro. Before winter, read boiler service before the cold.
Where we work on boilers
Out of Chantilly and Ashburn. We’ve repaired and replaced boilers in Alexandria, Annandale, Arlington, Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas, Marshall, McLean, Reston and Woodbridge. Pick your town for its own boiler page: what the houses there are like, the county’s permit rules, and the same prices.
What customers said
4.95 stars across 1,131 reviews. These are the ones about boilers.
…excellent service when my boiler needed to be replaced during the polar vortex. Alex Hittle came quickly, … and replaced my boiler quickly. Alex even managed to change their schedule, with the kind permission of their other customer so that I could have heat again in the freezing weather.Boiler replaced in a cold snap, Alexandria
Replacement for my broken gas water boiler was professionally done and in a timely manner. The technicians knew exactly what they were doing.Boiler replacement
…did a great job recommending a new system for a Condo that did not previously have one at all (Old Boiler System). The installation went great.An old boiler system replaced, Reston
…I had the pleasure of working with Efrain and Alex last year on a Boiler heater. The quality of work and total professionalism contributed 100% to my decision…Boiler repair, Woodbridge
Reviews are shown as customers wrote them, cut to the part about the boiler, with light typo cleanup. Read them all.
Asked on the phone
Our boiler replacements run $9,900 to $16,500 installed. A cast iron boiler swapped on the chimney is the low end, $9,900 to $13,690, and a high-efficiency condensing or combi boiler lands at $12,782 to $16,500. A chimney liner, when one is needed, is on top. We write yours down at the house before any work. From about $165 a month at 0% APR for 60 months, the whole price financed, on approved credit. How financing works
Typically the same day or the next day, and we’ll tell you honestly when we can get there. That’s anywhere we work in Northern Virginia, the City of Alexandria included. No heat in freezing weather counts as an emergency, and we run 24/7 emergency service.
$69 a system, regularly $99, the same as a furnace tune-up. If it turns up a repair, you get the price in writing before any work, and you decide.
No. We work on hot water boilers, the kind that heat radiators or baseboard, on natural gas or propane, Navien combis included. If yours is steam, oil-fired or a radiant floor system, we’ll say so on the phone rather than send someone out.
Navien, Weil-McLain and Force are the three we recommend. We service the boilers already in people’s basements too, Peerless included.
A hot water boiler is half heating system and half plumbing: the burner, gas valve and flue on one side, the water loop, circulator pumps, expansion tank and relief valve on the other. Ask whoever you call whether both trades come to your house. Ours do: SwiftPro holds a Virginia Class A license and runs separate heating and plumbing teams.
When the house’s hot water needs are modest and you want the water heater’s space back, yes. A big house with several showers running at once may do better with a heat-only boiler and its own water heater.
Most of the time goes into the piping and the venting around the boiler, not the boiler itself, so we tell you how long yours takes when we write the price.
It can make sense, but a house with radiators usually has no ducts, so the switch is usually ductless mini splits, and some people keep the boiler for the coldest weeks. The HVAC estimator prices the ductless side.
No. A gas hot water boiler sold today has to reach at least 84% AFUE, and the Department of Energy withdrew its proposal to require condensing boilers on January 17, 2025. A cast iron boiler on the chimney is still a legal replacement.
Most home hot water boilers are filled to about 12 psi cold, a little more in a tall house, and should stay under about 24 psi hot. The relief valve opens at 30. A gauge climbing toward 30, or a dripping relief valve, is usually the expansion tank or the fill valve.
Get the heat back on
If the house is cold now, call. A phone call puts you on the dispatch board, and we will tell you honestly when we can get there. Not that urgent? Send the form at the top and the office calls or texts you back.
SwiftPro Heating, Cooling & Plumbing
4230 Lafayette Center Dr N, Chantilly, VA 20151
44679 Endicott Dr, Suite 211, Ashburn, VA 20147
Virginia Class A contractor license #2705192276
Replacement prices are the range of SwiftPro’s own boiler replacements in Northern Virginia, installed; yours is quoted in writing at the house before any work starts, and the diagnostic visit is separate. Hot water boilers on natural gas or propane only. Navien, Weil-McLain, Force and Peerless are trademarks of their owners.