Service & repair
Ignition, gas valves, flame sensors, inducer and blower motors, limit switches and boards.
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Residential services
Five services and one habit. The habit is that nothing gets recommended until something has been measured, and the measurements are handed over at the end.
Repair
Air conditioning repair & diagnostics
Peninsula summers are short, which means a system sits unused for most of the year and is then asked for everything in a single week. What fails is usually one of a handful of things.
- Diagnostic
- About an hour of instrument workStatic pressure, temperature split, refrigerant pressures, superheat and subcooling, amp draws, plus a look at the return, the filter and the accessible ducting.
- Fee
- Flat, quoted on the phoneCredited against the repair if you go ahead. We would rather charge honestly for an hour of diagnosis than give it away and recover it inside a part.
- Common faults
- Capacitors, contactors and relays · condenser and blower motors · refrigerant leaks · frozen coils and airflow restriction · condensate drains, pumps and float switches · thermostats, sensors and wiring.
- Outcome
- Including "nothing is wrong"If the readings say the equipment is fine and the problem is a blocked grille or a closed damper, the visit ends there and the sheet says so.
Installation
Installation & replacement
The decisions that determine whether an installation performs are all taken before the equipment is ordered. Getting the box right and the airflow wrong produces an expensive system that underperforms, which is a remarkably common outcome.
- Load
- Calculated, not assumedFrom floor area, orientation, glazing, insulation and occupancy. Not copied off the data plate of the unit being removed, which was itself probably a guess.
- Airflow first
- Static pressure measured before specifyingThere is no point putting larger equipment on ducting that cannot carry the air. Sometimes the honest recommendation is to spend the money on the duct system instead.
- Compliance
- Permit pulled, Title 24 documentation prepared, inspection scheduled, closed permit handed over. Rebate paperwork where the equipment qualifies.
- Commissioning
- Measured again at the endThe same readings taken on day one, so you can see what changed. They go on the handover sheet.
Heat pumps
Heat pumps & conversions
The Peninsula climate is close to ideal for a heat pump: it rarely gets cold enough to trouble one, and the cooling season is mild enough that equipment is not pushed to its limit. One machine covers both seasons.
California's building standards have been moving steadily in this direction, and utility and state incentive programmes for heat-pump equipment come and go. We prepare the paperwork for whatever is live at the time and we tell you plainly if nothing is.
- Ducted heat-pump conversions
- Ductless and multi-zone systems
- Electrical capacity assessed before quoting
- Existing ducting tested for the new airflow
- Backup heat strategy where it is genuinely needed
- Permit, Title 24 and rebate documentation
Airflow
Ductwork & airflow
This is where most comfort complaints actually live, and it is where the measurement habit pays for itself fastest. A great many systems get replaced because the real fault was a return that was never big enough.
- Static pressure
- The starting pointMeasured across the air handler. Compared with what the equipment was designed for. If it is high, everything downstream of that reading is a symptom.
- Leakage
- Joints, boots, plenum connections and the return itself. A leaking return in an unconditioned space pulls dust and heat straight into the system.
- Return sizing
- The usual bottleneckPlenty of houses have adequate supply and a return less than half the size it needs to be. It starves the blower and no equipment upgrade will fix it.
- Balancing
- Register and damper adjustment measured at the grille, with before and after figures, rather than adjusted by feel.
Heating
Furnaces, controls and zoning
Mild winters mean heating equipment here often survives well past the age at which it should have been replaced, which makes the safety checks matter more rather than less.
Safety checks
Heat-exchanger inspection, flue and combustion air, and draught. On older equipment this is the part that is not optional.
Replacement
Sized to the building, with the ducting assessed first, and the permit and Title 24 paperwork handled.
Thermostats
Replacement, wiring, and schedules that match how the house is actually occupied rather than a factory default.
Zoning
Dampers and controls where one system genuinely has to serve rooms with very different loads — and honest advice about when zoning is the wrong answer.
Ductless heating
Single-room heat pumps for additions, ADUs, garages and offices that the main system was never designed to reach.
Maintenance
An annual visit that produces a record
A maintenance visit is only worth buying if it leaves numbers behind. Otherwise you have purchased a filter change and a reassuring sentence.
- Condenser coil cleaned and inspected
- Static pressure measured and logged
- Charge verified against superheat and subcooling
- Capacitor measured against its rating
- Contactor condition, terminal tightness, amp draws
- Condensate pan, trap, pump and line cleared
- Filter changed, size recorded for next time
- Readings compared with last year's sheet
Not sure which of these applies?
Describe what the system is doing. Working that out costs nothing.