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Houses in Fairfield and Suisun
Hot dry afternoons, a real drop overnight, and a very large number of systems sized as though the overnight drop did not exist.
An hour and a half, a sheet you keep, and a logger left behind
Everything found and identified, rating plates photographed, model and serial numbers recorded. Then the readings: static pressure across the filter and the coil, total airflow, refrigerant charge against the manufacturer’s target, temperature split, and the airflow at the registers in whichever room is the problem.
Where the complaint is about comfort rather than a breakdown, we leave a logger for a week. Indoors and outdoors, through the nights. It costs very little and it is the difference between a recommendation and a guess.
If there is a gas furnace, a combustion analysis and a heat exchanger inspection happen on that visit whatever you rang about, and where there is no working carbon monoxide alarm we fit one.
Four findings that account for most of it
The system is bigger than the house needs
The commonest fault we measure here, and it is made worse by the climate rather than excused by it. An oversized unit satisfies the thermostat quickly, shuts off and never runs long enough to move air around the house, so the rooms furthest from the return never catch up. A room-by-room load calculation settles it in an afternoon.
The ducts are in a 140-degree attic
An uninsulated attic here is far hotter than the outside air on a July afternoon, and every foot of duct crossing it loses cooling before the air reaches a room. Measured leakage on older runs is routinely a large fraction of total airflow. Sealing and insulating is unglamorous and frequently worth more than new equipment.
The house is still hot at seven in the morning
This is the finding that changes the recommendation, and it is invisible without a logger. A house that has shed its heat overnight needs a system for the afternoon. A house that has not is carrying yesterday into today, and the answer is usually the roof, the attic insulation and the overnight ventilation rather than more capacity.
Upstairs and downstairs are two different buildings
A single system serving both floors is doing two jobs at once, because the upstairs gains heat through the roof all afternoon and the downstairs does not. We measure them separately at the hour the complaint happens, and the answer is sometimes a damper, sometimes duct sealing, and occasionally a second system.
What we do in houses
- Diagnosis and repair
No cooling, no heat, short cycling, noise, a room that never matches. Measured, costed and repaired where a repair is right.
- Temperature logging
A week of indoor and outdoor readings before any capacity is priced.
- Load calculation and replacement
Room by room, on the house as it stands now rather than on the size of the unit coming out.
- Attic duct sealing and insulation
Leakage measured, joints sealed, runs insulated, registers balanced against a target.
- Whole-house fans and night ventilation
Sized against the house, with the exhaust path and the intake worked out properly, and an honest answer when the building is not suited.
- Gas appliance safety
Combustion analysis, heat exchanger inspection, flue checked as installed, carbon monoxide alarms fitted where there is none.
Three things we will not do in your house
Put a percentage on a quote
Savings depend on the building, the summer, how you live and what the utility does next. We will tell you what we measured before and after. A percentage on a quote is a number somebody made up.
Sell a fan instead of a system
A whole-house fan is a genuinely good tool on the right house and it is not a substitute for cooling on a hot week. Where a house needs both, we will say so. Where it needs only one, we will say that too.
Tell you when the air is safe
On a smoke day the official air quality reading is the answer and it is free. We are not an air quality authority and we will not make health claims from anything we measure.
Tell us what the house is doing
Which room, which floor, what time of day, and whether it is still warm inside first thing in the morning. That last one matters more than people expect. 1972 N Texas St, Fairfield. Monday to Friday, 7am to 4pm.