Veteran-Owned · MA Master Plumber PL17071-M · 24/7 No-Heat Service

Duxbury has very little natural gas service, so the option most South Shore homeowners default to is simply not available here. The real decision is between a new oil or propane system and going electric with a cold-climate heat pump — and because Duxbury is on an investor-owned utility with full Mass Save eligibility, that second option is stronger here than most homeowners expect.

Oil is the incumbent, and it is expensive

Most Duxbury homes we service run on delivered oil, some on propane. That means your heating cost is set by a commodity market and a delivery truck, and you have no real leverage over either. A high-efficiency oil boiler or propane furnace is still a legitimate choice — lower up-front cost, familiar, and the right call if your distribution is sound and you are not staying long. We install Laars, Lochinvar, Navien and Viessmann hydronics and pipe them properly, which matters more for longevity than the badge on the front.

But we would be doing you a disservice not to run the other number. A Duxbury house on oil, with rebates fully available, is the exact scenario the Mass Save incentives were designed for. Whole-home heat pump retrofits are the most common large project we do in this town for a reason. Run it yourself first with the rebate calculator.

And the third answer, which we give more often than people expect: repair it. A boiler in its teens with a failed circulator, zone valve or aquastat is a repair, not a replacement.

Seasonal and lightly occupied homes

Duxbury’s coastal side has a lot of houses that sit empty for stretches of the winter, and a heating failure in an unoccupied house is not a no-heat call — it is a burst-pipe restoration. What actually protects the house:

• Low-temperature alarms and remote monitoring so you find out the boiler is down before the pipes do.
• Freeze protection on vulnerable runs — crawlspaces, exterior walls, unheated additions.
• A serviced system, not a hoped-for one. The failures we get called to in January are almost always on equipment that skipped its annual service.
• Heat pumps with remote control, which let you bring the house up before you arrive and hold it safely conditioned when you are not there.

Whole-home retrofits in older houses

Duxbury has real antique housing stock, especially around Hall’s Corner and the older village areas. Retrofitting those houses is genuinely more involved than a 1990s colonial — heat loss is higher, wall cavities are unpredictable, and there is often no duct path anywhere. That does not make it impossible; it makes the load calculation and the design matter more. We size to design temperature and commission on paper you can see, because an undersized heat pump in an antique is how a homeowner ends up telling everyone heat pumps do not work in New England.

What we handle in Duxbury

• Heating repair and no-heat service — oil, propane and heat pumps, 24/7.
• Boiler repair and service — circulators, zone valves, leaks, kettling and controls.
• Boiler replacement and furnace replacement — sized to a heat loss calculation, not the old nameplate.
• Whole-home heat pump retrofits with Mass Save incentives processed up front and applied at signing.
• Annual maintenance — combustion testing and safety checks, which matter more on oil than anything else you can do.
• Propane piping — permitted, pressure tested and inspected, including generator lines.

Duxbury questions we hear

Will a heat pump really carry an old Duxbury house? Properly sized cold-climate equipment does, and thousands of Massachusetts homes now run heat-pump-only. The honest caveat: in a leaky antique, the sizing and sometimes the envelope work matter more than the equipment brand. We will tell you if your house needs air sealing before it needs a heat pump. Our owner’s guide covers how the systems are meant to be operated.

What happens to my oil tank if I switch? We handle removal as part of the project. An abandoned tank in a basement or buried in a yard is a liability, not a saving.

My oil boiler is 30 years old and runs fine — why replace it? Because it will not fail in October. It will fail at 2am in January, and if the house is empty that week you are dealing with water damage on top of it. Planning it in the fall costs the same money and gets a better outcome.

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Also in Duxbury: plumbing · cooling and heat pumps · all Duxbury services

Heating nearby: Marshfield · Kingston · Pembroke · Plymouth

3R Plumbing & Mechanical LLC · 77 Accord Park Drive, Suite D6, Norwell, MA · MA Master Plumber PL17071-M