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Berkeley houses, most of which were never ducted
Shingle and craftsman houses with gravity heat or nothing, bungalows with a wall furnace, crawl spaces you can only work in on your back, and hills and flats that behave like two different climates.
An hour and a half, and a sheet you keep
Everything found and identified, rating plates photographed, model and serial numbers recorded, manufacture date read off the serial. Then the readings: static pressure and airflow where there are ducts, refrigerant charge against the manufacturer’s target where there is cooling, temperature split, and humidity in the room with the complaint.
On any gas appliance — furnace, wall furnace, floor furnace or water heater — a combustion analysis and a proper look at the flue happen on that visit whatever you rang about. Where there is a gas appliance and no working carbon monoxide alarm, we fit one.
We also look at how everything is held down and whether the gas connector can move, because in this part of the world that is a five-minute check with a real answer.
Four findings that account for most of it
A wall or floor furnace nobody has tested
These heat a great many houses here and they are not automatically dangerous, nor automatically fine. A combustion analysis and a look at the flue take twenty minutes and produce a real answer. What we will not do is condemn one on sight, and what we will not do either is nod at one that is spilling.
Ducts in the crawl space, losing most of it
Where a ducted system does exist, the runs are frequently in an unconditioned crawl space with joints that were never sealed and sections that have come off entirely. Measured leakage is routinely a large fraction of the total airflow, and on the return side it also means the house is breathing whatever is down there.
A ductless head asked to do too much
One head will condition the room it is in. It will not condition the room around a corner, whatever figure was on the box, because it has no way of moving air there. This is a sizing and placement problem rather than a fault, and the answer is usually a second head rather than a bigger one.
Nothing is strapped and nothing can move
An unstrapped water heater, a rigid gas connector on an appliance that is not fixed to anything, and a furnace sitting on a platform it is not attached to. All three are cheap and quick, all three are worth doing, and none of them makes an unretrofitted house safe. We do the first part and tell you plainly about the second.
What we do in houses
- Diagnosis and repair
No heat, no cooling, short cycling, noise, a room that never matches. Measured, costed and repaired where a repair is right.
- Ductless for houses with no duct route
Sized per room from a load calculation, not from a square-footage figure on a box.
- Heat pumps and replacement
Sized from the house as it stands. Where a panel upgrade is needed we tell you the amperage in writing and you get an electrician.
- Duct repair and sealing
Leakage measured, joints sealed, crawl-space runs insulated, returns added where a house has one and five rooms.
- Wall and floor furnace testing
Combustion analysis, flue checked as installed, and an honest verdict either way.
- Restraint and flexible connectors
Water heaters strapped, appliances secured to manufacturer instructions, rigid gas connectors replaced with flexible ones.
- Carbon monoxide alarms
Fitted where there is a gas appliance and no working alarm, on the first visit, as a matter of course.
- Annual service
The same readings every year on the same sheet, so a slow change is visible before it is a breakdown.
Three things we will not do in your house
Tell you your house is earthquake safe
We can strap a water heater and bolt a furnace down, and both are worth doing. Neither tells you anything about the building. That is a structural engineer’s answer and a retrofit contractor’s work, and we will not let a strapped tank stand in for it.
Condemn an appliance without showing you
A cracked heat exchanger or a spilling flue is a real reason to shut an appliance down and it is the most abused finding in this trade. If we call it, you get the camera image or the combustion reading, and you are welcome to get a second opinion before spending anything.
Recommend replacement on age alone
Age changes the arithmetic on a repair. It is not a fault. A forty-year-old wall furnace that passes its combustion test and vents properly is a working appliance, and there are a great many of them in this city.
Tell us what the house is doing
Which room, what time of day, and how long it has been like that. If you have a wall or floor furnace and it has never been tested, say so. 1224 Tenth St, Berkeley. Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 4pm.