Contact Heater Handbook
How to reach the Heater Handbook editorial team, what a useful correction includes, and why email is not an emergency line.
The Heater Handbook editorial team reads mail at contact@heaterhandbook.com. That address is also in the footer of every page, written as a normal mailto link. There is no phone queue, no chat widget, and no form. A form on a static site would need a server and a stored pile of personal messages. Email keeps that off the site.
Write in plain text. Include the page URL if you are writing about a guide. One specific message is more useful than a general complaint that “the water heater article” is wrong, because the site has separate pages for gas and electric, for leaks and condensation, and for a dripping relief valve versus the annual test of that valve.
Corrections to a guide
A correction is the mail this desk most wants. Send:
- The full URL of the page.
- The heading and the sentence you think is wrong.
- What you expected it to say, and why.
- A source a reader can open: a manufacturer’s manual for a named model, a code section adopted in your city, a Department of Energy or ENERGY STAR page, a CPSC publication, or an IRS page. A screenshot of an anonymous forum is not enough on its own.
- If the issue is a model-year change, the brand, model, and what the manual for that serial number says.
If the point is accepted, the page is revised and the updated date changes. If the manual for one brand contradicts a general step, the usual edit is to narrow the step, not to pretend every heater on the market behaves alike. The editorial policy describes that standard.
Do not send account numbers, a photo of a driver’s license, or a full credit-card statement. A photo of a data plate with the model and serial is useful. A photo that also shows mail on the floor or a child’s face is not. Crop to the heater.
What email cannot do
Email does not dispatch a plumber, and it is not monitored as an emergency service. Do not write for any of the following and then wait:
- You smell gas, or you are not sure whether a rotten-egg odor is gas or the hot-water smell described in the smell guide. Leave the house, do not use switches, and call the gas utility from outside.
- A carbon monoxide alarm is sounding, or people in the house have a sudden headache and nausea that improves outdoors. Leave and call the emergency number. The venting guide is background for later, not a response plan while the alarm is active.
- Water is pouring from the heater and you cannot find the shutoff. If you can close the cold-water valve on top of the heater, or the house main, do that, and kill power at the breaker for an electric unit only if you can reach the panel without standing in water. Then call a plumber. The leak guide helps after the water is stopped.
- Someone is burned. Cool the burn with cool water and get medical care. The temperature guide is prevention, not treatment.
The site also cannot price your replacement, inspect a flue from a description, or tell you that your city does not require a permit. The building department answers the permit question. Two local quotes answer the price question. The cost guide only collects published typical ranges so you can tell a reasonable bid from a number that forgot the vent.
What to include if you want a page checked against your heater
If you are asking whether a guide applies to the unit in front of you, send the facts a technician would ask for on the phone, and expect a source-level answer rather than a personal diagnosis:
- Gas, electric, heat pump, or tankless, and the brand and model from the data plate.
- Approximate age, if you know it, or the serial number so the manufacturer’s date code can be looked up in their own documentation.
- What the heater did, in the order it happened. “No hot water” is less useful than “the status light flashes three times, the burner does not light, and the pilot area smells like gas for a few seconds after a reset.”
- What you have already done, including any breaker you reset and how many times.
- A sentence about the room: garage, interior closet, combustion-air openings blocked, recently painted solid door, new water softener, municipal work on the main.
Even with that, the reply will point at the relevant guide and the manual. It will not clear you to keep a heater in service with a seized relief valve or a backdrafting flue. Those calls belong to a licensed person, as laid out in when to call a pro.
Privacy of messages
A message you send is read for the editorial purpose you wrote about. It is not sold, and it is not added to a marketing list. Do not send sensitive personal information you would not want stored in an email inbox. The privacy policy covers the site itself, cookies, and the advertising tag that is not yet active.
No solicitation
Heater Handbook does not buy guest posts, link insertions, or product placement. Do not send a “collaboration” that asks for a link to a shopping page. Manufacturer documentation and primary safety sources are cited because readers need them, not because a vendor asked. If you are a public agency correcting a description of your own publication, say which sentence and which document. That mail is welcome.