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Find out what the building will allow before you find out what it needs
In most of this city that is not a formality. It decides where an outdoor unit can stand, whether a line set may cross a wall, and occasionally whether the job happens at all.
The calls we take most
No heat
Furnaces, wall heaters, floor furnaces and heat pumps. Diagnosed and priced before anything is fitted, with combustion tested and the heat exchanger inspected on anything that burns gas. On equipment of a certain age we will also tell you plainly what we are not qualified to disturb.
A house with no cooling at all
Extremely common here and entirely solvable. The question is which route the building will take: an existing duct route if there is one, ductless heads if there is not, or something smaller than either if only one or two rooms are the real problem.
One room that never works
Measured, not guessed. Airflow at that register against the others, static pressure, return capacity and the state of the run feeding it. In a house that has been divided or extended, the room that suffers is usually the one added last.
Damp, condensation and stuffiness
An old house that has been air-sealed and re-glazed behaves very differently from the one that was built. Extraction that reaches outside rather than into a roof space, and an honest account of what a dehumidifier will and will not do.
Annual service
Burners, heat exchanger, flue, coils, drains, filter fit, electrical connections, charge and combustion, with the readings recorded so this year can be compared with last year rather than remembered.
Before you buy, sell or let
What is installed, how old each unit is from its serial number, what condition it is in, what putting it right would cost, and — specifically in this city — whether what is there now looks as though it was ever approved.
The outside wall is the hard part, not the inside one
Indoors, a ductless head goes where the room needs it and looks like a box on a wall. Outdoors is where the decisions are, and they are rarely only technical.
What the machine needs. Clearance on the sides and above, to the manufacturer’s figures; a level, solid base clear of the ground; a route for the line set and for condensate; and somewhere it is not blowing hot air into a window or a neighbour’s wall two metres away.
What the building wants. Not on the street elevation, not visible from the front, sometimes not on a shared wall at all, and sometimes screened to a specific description. Those are not our rules and we do not argue with them — we design around them, which is easier before the equipment is chosen than after.
What the neighbours hear. A small unit in a narrow side passage between two houses is louder in the house next door than in yours. We will say so, and we will suggest the other side of the building even when it costs more in pipe.
Four things we say to homeowners here
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No ductwork is not a problem, it is a route question
A house with no ducts is not a house that cannot be cooled. It is a house where the honest options are ductless, or a duct route somebody has to design rather than assume.
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Ask about the outside before you ask about the inside
Where the outdoor unit may stand decides more about the job than the indoor equipment does, and it is the part that gets discovered last and costs most to change.
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Age alone is not a reason to replace
A system that holds its charge, moves the air it should and passes its safety checks works, whatever the year on the label. Age changes the arithmetic on an expensive repair and nothing else.
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A gas appliance with no carbon monoxide alarm is the one urgent item
Everything else on this page can wait for a convenient week. That cannot. Fit one, and have the combustion tested and the heat exchanger inspected.