Empire Comfort Systems Tech Support: A Facilities Buyer's 7-Point Pre-Call Checklist

Some background: I'm the office administrator for a 40-person engineering firm in Columbus, Ohio. I manage all facility purchasing—roughly $60,000 annually across 8 vendors. Give or take a few hundred, I'd have to check the ledger.

One of those vendors is Empire Comfort Systems. We buy their gas fireplaces and heaters for the office—the conference room fireplace gets more use than the projector. I'm also the person who gets paged when something stops working. What I've learned managing these units for the past three years might save you the same headache.

When I first took over facilities purchasing in 2021, I assumed calling Empire Comfort Systems tech support was like any customer service line: you call, you explain, they help. Then came a 45-minute dispatcher conversation where I was asked for a model number I didn't have, a service history I hadn't pulled, and an error code I'd never noticed. The call had failed before anyone picked up the phone.

This is the checklist I built after that. Seven points, about 10 minutes. It won't fix everything, but it eliminates a good portion of the calls we used to make—and cuts the rest in half.

Step 1: Find and photograph the model number

"We have a big gas fireplace in the conference room" is not a model number. Empire Comfort Systems tech support can't diagnose a unit without the exact model, because service procedures vary across their gas fireplaces. I've got three units installed across two locations, each with a different rating plate.

The rating plate is usually on the side of the unit or the underside of the top panel. Take a photo. The spec sheets on empire-comfort-systems.com list details for every model, but the physical plate is what tech support needs. You'll also need that photo again at Step 7.

(Should mention: my first call about the conference room fireplace lasted 45 minutes and ended with a technician visit that turned out unnecessary. The model number was on the plate the whole time. That visit cost us $220.)

Step 2: Document what the unit actually does

Not what you think is wrong. What it does.

Get precise:

• Does the pilot light but the burner shuts off after a few minutes?
• Does the thermostat read 72, but the fireplace never fires?
• Does it run for exactly 20 minutes and then stop?
• Does it produce no heat, or just not enough?

Write it down, or better, record a ten-second video. A description like "pilot lights, then the gas valve clicks off after 30 seconds" lets a remote technician name the likely component over the phone. That's the difference between a phone fix and a site visit.

Step 3: Do the five-minute basic check

Everyone thinks their problem is beyond the basics. I've emailed the whole office about this after becoming one of those people myself.

Before calling, run through:

• Gas valve fully open—parallel to the pipe, not perpendicular
• Thermostat in HEAT mode, set above the current room temperature
• Thermostat batteries replaced within the last year
• The unit's own on/off switch in the ON position
• Circuit breaker not tripped

In my first year at this company, I watched a technician spend a full hour at our facility because a vendor had switched the thermostat to OFF while decorating for a holiday party. The fireplace wasn't broken. The invoice was. Five minutes of verification beats five days of correction.

Step 4: Capture the error code

Newer Empire Comfort Systems gas fireplaces display diagnostic codes—E2, F1, a blinking light pattern. If there's a code, photograph it. Put another way: your memory isn't good enough. Use the camera.

I've had error codes disappear by the time I got through to tech support. The photo let the technician reconstruct the state of the unit. So glad I took that picture—I almost skipped it.

Step 5: Pull the service history before you call

When was the unit last serviced? Who did the work? Is it under warranty?

This is where the purchasing side of my job kicks in. Our service records show gas fireplace visits running about $180 to $350, based on the last two years of invoices. If a component is under warranty, that's the whole cost gone. But you can't claim a warranty if you don't know the install date.

Worth adding: the Chimney Safety Institute of America recommends annual inspections for wood and gas burning fireplaces. We schedule ours every fall before the heating season. That's a prevention thing, and it has turned up minor issues before they became expensive ones.

Step 6: Try a documented reset—if the manual says so

Some Empire units have a reset sequence: a specific combination of switches, or holding a button for a count. Not all models do, so don't improvise. Check the manual, or confirm with tech support that your model has a reset procedure.

The surprise wasn't that the reset worked. It was that I'd been avoiding it for weeks because it felt too simple. I went back and forth—this can't be a real fix, a technician probably needs to look at it. A $220 service call later, I learned the lesson: the documented reset is always worth trying first.

Step 7: Call with everything in front of you

By the time you dial Empire Comfort Systems tech support, you should have: model number, symptom description or video, basic check results, error code photo, service history, warranty info.

And once you're on the call, write down the case reference number. The last time I called back for a follow-up, the case number made the second call 10 minutes instead of 30. I should add that it matters for accounting, too: matching the reference number to the notes kept finance from rejecting the service charge.

What not to do

Some mistakes from my own record:

Don't skip the basics and call immediately. Our entryway wall heater "died" last winter. The floor crew had unplugged it while cleaning and never plugged it back in. A 30-second check would have saved a 40-minute support call.

Don't assume new thermostats have good batteries. Dead-in-the-box batteries have caused two "malfunctions" in our Empire thermostats. New doesn't mean full.

Don't take gas appliances apart. Gas valves, burner assemblies, and gas lines are not DIY territory. The National Fuel Gas Code (NFPA 54) sets the standard for how these appliances are installed and serviced, and the line I draw with our team is simple: anything beyond a battery change or a documented reset sequence requires a licensed technician. That boundary isn't about capability. It's about not turning a $200 repair into a $2,000 incident.

And don't forget that the same prevention logic applies to the rest of the facility. Last year we caught a leaking frameless shower door in the office gym before it damaged the subfloor—a $12 replacement hinge instead of a $900 door assembly. The slow shower head in the second-floor bathroom? I looked up how to clean shower head vinegar scale, spent 30 minutes with a 1:1 vinegar-and-water soak in a plastic bag, and crossed plumber off the list. The whitish gunk on the conference room glass wall? Adhesive remover took it off in ten minutes. We nearly priced out a replacement panel. Same principle every time: verify before you fix.

Check first. Fix second. That's the whole game.