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Services
Five things, each written out in full — including the part where we say what it does not cover and when we would tell you not to buy it.
Air conditioning
Repair and replacement. Diagnostic first, quote second.
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.
The reason we charge it is the reason it works. A free call has to be paid for somewhere, and it usually gets paid for by finding a reason to sell a system. Charging for the diagnosis means the incentive is to diagnose.
On a replacement we size to the house as it is. Matching whatever came out repeats whatever mistake was made the first time, and on a hillside lot with a west wall the first mistake was usually oversizing.
What the quote separates
- Equipment, on its own line
- Ductwork, on its own line, so you can see what it is costing
- Attic vent work, if the job triggers any
- Permit and inspection
- Removal and disposal of the old equipment
On refrigerant
Refrigerant is not consumed. A system that is low is a system that is leaking. We find the leak or we tell you the coil is finished. We do not sell an annual top-up as a service — that is selling the same gas every summer and venting it in between.
Heat pumps
A mild winter is the condition a heat pump is best at, which makes this valley one of the better places in the country to put one in.
One machine heats and cools. The efficiency argument is strongest exactly where the winter never gets severe, and here it does not — which is why we will raise it on most replacement quotes rather than waiting to be asked.
What we will not do is push you into one. If your furnace is sound, your ductwork is good and you only need cooling replaced, "keep the furnace" is a perfectly respectable answer and it is cheaper. We say it regularly.
- Where it wins
- Replacing both halves at onceIf the furnace and the air conditioner are both at the end of their lives, one heat pump does both jobs and there is only one machine to maintain.
- Where it is marginal
- Sound furnace, failed condenserThen you are paying to replace working equipment. We will price both and say which we would do.
- What it needs
- Ductwork that can carry more airA heat pump generally moves a larger volume of gentler air than a furnace does. Duct that was marginal for a furnace will be noisy and ineffective with a heat pump, which is another reason duct is quoted separately.
- What we will not quote
- A savings figureNot a percentage, not a payback period. It depends on your rate plan, your house and how you live in it, and a number given from your driveway is a brochure.
Ductwork & zoning
A bigger machine is the most expensive way to make an unbalanced house slightly worse. Said on most hillside visits
This is the work that actually fixes the complaint we hear most: one floor is always wrong.
In a split-level house the physics are against you before anything is installed. Warm air leaves the lower floor and collects at the top. If the duct system was balanced at all, it was balanced on a cool morning in a new build with all the doors open.
So we start with the run to whichever rooms lose. Is it connected? Is it crushed? Is it long, undersized and fighting three bends? Is there any return air path out of that room once the door is closed? Those four questions settle most of these houses.
What we do
- Reconnecting and rerouting runs
- Sealing plenum and boot connections
- Insulating and supporting attic runs
- Adding returns, transfer grilles and door undercuts
- Balancing dampers, properly and in writing
- Zoning, where the house genuinely justifies it
Three things zoning needs
Equipment that can turn down when only one zone calls. Duct that can actually carry the air where the dampers send it. And a bypass strategy that does not just push conditioned air back into the return.
Without all three, zoning makes a house louder and no more comfortable, and it costs a great deal. We check for those before we quote it, and we have talked people out of it more than once.
Attic ventilation & vents
In most of the country attic venting is a heat and moisture question. Here it is also a fire question, and that changes what goes in.
An attic needs air moving through it: intake low, exhaust high, in a reasonable balance. Get that wrong and the attic runs hotter in summer, which costs you through the ductwork and the ceiling, and holds moisture in winter.
What is different about this valley is that those same openings are the route wind-blown embers take into a building. Construction rules for wildland-urban interface areas address exactly that, and a great many properties around here sit inside one.
We do not guess at what applies to you. Requirements of this kind have been revised more than once, and they depend on your address and on the scope of the work. We check what is current when the permit is pulled and tell you what it means before you choose anything.
What we do up there
- Replacing attic vents with listed ember-resistant vents where that is what the job calls for
- Correcting intake and exhaust balance, including attics that have three exhausts and no intake
- Sealing the ceiling plane where duct, wiring and fixtures pass through it
- Bathroom and range exhausts that terminate in the attic instead of outside
What this is not
This is vent and ventilation work, not a home-hardening service. We are not a roofer, we do not do siding, windows, decking or defensible-space clearance, and we will not tell you a vent replacement has made a house fire-safe. It is one detail, done correctly, on the part of the building we are already in.
Maintenance
Once a year for most houses here, and it is worth booking it for spring rather than for the week everybody else discovers a problem.
The visit: condenser coil condition and cleaning, evaporator coil, condensate drain cleared and tested, refrigerant charge measured against the manufacturer's figures, electrical connections checked and torqued, blower and filter.
Then, because we are already up there: a look at the duct, and a look at the attic vents. A disconnected run or a damaged vent screen is much easier to find on a service visit than in the middle of a smoke event or a heat run.
You get it written up, 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.
What maintenance will not do
It will not make an undersized system adequate, it will not fix a duct layout that was wrong when it went in, and it will not extend the life of a compressor that is already failing. It keeps a sound system sound and finds problems while they are still small.
Not sure which of those you need?
Tell us which room, which floor and what time of day. That usually settles it on the phone.