Services

Removing an evaporative cooler and putting a refrigerated system into a house that was never built for one.

It is the job we do most and the one we have the most opinions about, so it has a page of its own rather than a paragraph here. The short version is that it is five separate pieces of work — equipment, supply duct, return air, the roof, and the permit — and that a quote which only prices the first of those is not a quote for the job you are actually buying.

We price all five on every conversion, and we show you the lines separately so you can see where the money is going and compare it honestly against anybody else's number.

A flat diagnostic fee brings a technician out to find the cause and take readings, and it comes off the bill if you go ahead with the repair.

We charge it because it is the only arrangement that keeps the incentives straight. A free call has to be paid for somewhere, and it usually gets paid for by finding a reason to sell a system.

When a repair is not worth doing you will hear that plainly, with the reason — a failed compressor on a system past its service life, a leaking evaporator coil that costs most of a replacement, a part that is no longer made. You get both numbers and the decision stays with you.

Common faults in these tracts

• A loaded condenser coil, which looks exactly like a refrigerant problem
• Capacitors, contactors and fan motors that gave out during a heat run
• A blocked condensate drain and the safety switch that shuts the system down
• A disconnected flexible duct run in an attic nobody has been into for years
• Refrigerant low because it is leaking, which means finding the leak

Air conditioners, furnaces and heat pumps. We size to the house as it is — square footage, orientation, glazing, insulation and how the attic behaves — rather than matching whatever came out.

That matters here more than it sounds, because in these tracts the outgoing system was very often oversized to begin with. Replace a five-ton with a five-ton and you inherit somebody's 1998 guess along with the equipment: a machine that reaches the thermostat quickly, shuts off, and leaves the back of the house behind.

Heat pumps

Winters here are mild, which is the condition heat pumps are best at. We will raise it on most replacement quotes. We will not quote you a savings figure.

Ductwork

On its own line, always. If yours is sound you will see a small number there and you should be pleased.

Permit

Pulled by us, inspector met by us. An unpermitted changeout surfaces years later, usually during a sale.

Disposal

Old equipment taken away, and refrigerant recovered properly rather than vented.

New duct in houses that never had any, and repair in the ones that do.

A conversion is mostly a ductwork job with a machine attached, and even on a straight replacement the duct decides how the house feels. A good system on bad duct performs like a bad system; a modest system on good duct performs like something far more expensive.

In an inland attic every leaking joint is cooled air paid for and thrown away into a space that is far hotter than the rooms below. Every unsupported sag is airflow the last bedroom on the run never receives.

What we do up there

• New supply runs, sized and laid out room by room
• Return-air plenums, grilles and transfer paths
• Sealing plenum and boot connections
• Insulating and properly supporting attic runs
• Removing abandoned cooler ducting
• Registers and grilles chosen for the room, not for the box

Filters, coils, the condensate drain cleared and tested, refrigerant charge measured against the manufacturer's figures, electrical connections checked and torqued, and the blower looked at properly rather than glanced at.

While we are in the attic we look at the duct. A disconnected run, a crushed flexible section or a rodent hole is far easier to find in April than in the second week of a heat run when everybody is calling at once.

You get it written up afterwards with photographs of anything we want you to see. If there is nothing to report, the report says so, and the visit is not used as a sales appointment.