Half of what gets called a heating problem here is an air problem
Heating, cooling and ventilation across Vallejo and southern Solano County. This is a windy waterfront town with a lot of old timber housing and a lot of tall commercial space, and cold rooms in both are far more often about where the air is going than about how much heat is being made.
Repair, service, replacement, ductwork and ventilation
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Diagnosis and repair
No heat, no cooling, short cycling, a tripping breaker, water where it should not be. Found, explained and priced before anything is fitted, and we say plainly when a repair is not worth doing.
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Air measurement
Static pressure across the filter and the coil, airflow at the registers, return capacity, and duct leakage. This is the first thing we do and it is the thing that most often answers the question.
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Ductwork
Sealing, repair and replacement in crawl spaces, attics and above ceilings. Disconnected boots, crushed flex and returns that were never big enough are the three findings we make most often.
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Service and maintenance
Coils, drains, filters, electrical connections, charge against the manufacturer’s target and combustion on anything that burns gas, with the readings written down so years can be compared.
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Replacement
A room-by-room load calculation before a size is named. Old Vallejo housing has been added to, split, insulated and re-glazed, and the tonnage that is there now is rarely the tonnage that fits.
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Ventilation and pressure
Outside air where the code requires it, exhaust that works, and make-up air where a kitchen hood or a big extract fan is pulling the building into a vacuum.
Houses, flats and rental property
Victorian and early-century timber houses on the hill, post-war tracts, and the flats and duplexes between them. Draughty rooms, a floor that never warms, a furnace that runs constantly, or a system that has simply stopped.
Where a house has been added to over a century, the ductwork usually tells the story better than the equipment does. We read it before we quote anything.
Offices, workshops, warehouses and restaurants
Waterfront and downtown premises, light industrial units off the highway, workshops with tall roller doors, restaurants with hoods that move more air than anybody has accounted for, and small offices with one packaged unit doing everything.
In commercial buildings the pressure question comes first: what is being extracted, what is replacing it, and which door the building is drawing through.
Where you feel it tells you what it is
A cold spot beside a window, a draught across the floor, cold air out of a register and a cold room with no obvious source are four completely different faults, and only one of them is usually about the heating system.
Asked most weeks
One room in my house never gets warm. Do I need a bigger furnace?
Almost certainly not, and it is the wrong first question. If warm air is not arriving in that room, more heat at the furnace makes the rest of the house warmer and that room no better. The measurement is airflow at that register compared with the others, plus static pressure on the system. In Vallejo housing the answer is most often a duct fault under the floor — a supply boot pulled off, a crushed run, or joints that let go years ago — or a room with no return path, which is cured with a transfer grille for very little money.
Is sealing the ducts really worth doing?
On a leaky system it is the best value work in this trade, because ducts here generally run through a crawl space that is effectively outdoors, and air lost there is heat you paid for warming the underside of your floor. It is usually a day of work and it costs a fraction of any equipment. What we will not do is quote you a percentage saving in advance — that depends entirely on how leaky your ducts actually are, which is why we measure first and tell you what we found.
My restaurant dining room is cold at the door end, but only during service. Why?
Because the kitchen hood is removing a great deal of air and something has to replace it. If nobody has designed make-up air, the building draws it through the front door, at whatever temperature it is outside, straight across your customers. Adding heating capacity to that is buying heat for the street. The measurement is extract volume, make-up air supplied, and the pressure difference across the building while it runs as it normally runs. Supplying that air deliberately is usually cheaper than the capacity that gets proposed instead.
The air from the vents feels cold even when the heat is on.
That is the one complaint on our list that genuinely is the heating system, and it is worth a visit. Check two things first because they are free: whether the thermostat fan is set to on rather than auto, which makes the blower run between burns, and whether the filter is restricted. After that it needs measuring — temperature rise across the furnace against the range on the equipment label, static pressure, and the temperature at that register compared with one close to the furnace.
Should I replace a furnace because of its age?
Not on its own. A furnace that burns cleanly, passes a heat exchanger inspection and moves the air it should is a furnace that works, whatever the year on the label. What age does change is the arithmetic on an expensive repair. There is one genuinely urgent item regardless of age: if there is a gas appliance in the building and no working carbon monoxide alarm, fit one this week and have the combustion tested.
Which areas do you cover?
Vallejo, Benicia, American Canyon, Fairfield, Suisun City, Napa, Crockett and Rodeo.
Vallejo and southern Solano County
Vallejo, Benicia, American Canyon, Fairfield, Suisun City, Napa, Crockett and Rodeo. Outside that, ask — the answer depends on the week rather than on a line on a map.
(707) 358-9510, Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 4.30pm.