The furnace is ours. The house it is bolted to is not.
Heating, cooling and ventilation across Berkeley and the East Bay. We work in houses that are a hundred years old on ground that moves, and a good deal of what gets called a heating problem here turns out to belong to somebody else’s trade. We will do our part properly and name the rest.
- Strapped and flexibleGas and water connections that can move, on every appliance we touch.
- Measured, not guessedAirflow, pressure, charge and combustion, written down with the date.
- Named, not fudgedWhen the answer is structural, electrical or a roof, we say whose it is.
What makes a Berkeley house different to work in
No ducts, and nowhere to put them
Brown shingle and craftsman houses were built with gravity heat or with nothing, and a great many still have no route for ductwork that does not cost more than the equipment. That is a constraint rather than a problem to be bullied through, and the honest answers are ductless heads, a small-duct system, or conditioning part of the house properly.
The equipment is in a crawl space
Low headroom, earth floors, a furnace on a platform somebody built in 1970, ducts running through unconditioned space and a gas line that was never meant to move. Half of what we find down there is fine. The other half is a two-hour job that nobody has ever looked at.
The hills and the flats are two climates
A house in the flats gets fog and a house three hundred feet up gets sun, and the same equipment behaves differently in each. We measure at the property rather than quoting a rule for the city, because the rule for the city is wrong in one direction or the other almost everywhere.
Houses
Shingle and craftsman houses in the north and the hills, bungalows and flats in the south and west, apartment buildings and converted houses around the campus, and a great deal of housing where the heating was installed before anybody expected cooling to be part of the conversation.
Every first visit finds everything, records model and serial numbers, takes the readings, and checks the gas appliances whatever the call was about.
Premises
Shops and restaurants on the avenues, offices and studios in the flats, light industrial and makerspace toward the waterfront, clinics and small laboratories, and older mixed-use buildings with somebody living above the business.
Commercial work starts with a written survey of what is on the roof, what it serves, and which of it is still connected to anything.
What actually happens to your heating in an earthquake
Five pieces of equipment, crossed with the four kinds of building they sit in. What is worth securing, what it costs, what it does not protect you from, and the one situation where the honest answer is that this is not a heating question at all. Also the two-minute version of what to do about the gas afterwards, which is shorter than most people expect and different from what most people have been told.
The work, plainly
- Diagnosis with instruments
Static pressure, airflow, refrigerant charge against the manufacturer’s target, temperature split, combustion analysis on anything that burns gas. Written down with the date and the conditions.
- Repair, costed first
What it is, what it costs, and what it does not fix. Replacement is discussed after a repair has a number against it.
- Ductless and heat pumps
For houses with no duct route, sized per room from a load calculation, with line sets routed where they can be serviced and condensate given a fall it can use.
- Ducted systems and duct repair
Where ducts exist: leakage measured, joints sealed, crawl-space runs insulated, returns added, registers balanced against a measured target.
- Gas appliance safety
Combustion analysis, heat exchanger inspection, flue checked as installed. Carbon monoxide alarms fitted where there is a gas appliance and no working alarm.
- Restraint and flexible connections
Appliances secured to manufacturer instructions, water heaters strapped, and flexible gas and water connectors fitted where they are missing. Installed work, not an inspection service.
- Commercial surveys and maintenance
Every unit mapped to what it serves, the same readings every visit, written to satisfy a landlord, a tenant or an inspector.
- Planned maintenance
For houses and premises, the same readings each time, so a slow change shows up as a change.
What we will not do
In this city a great many of these questions arrive at a heating contractor first. Answering them here means nobody has to be told twice.
We are not structural engineers
We will bolt an appliance down to the manufacturer’s instructions and fit connectors that can move. Whether the structure it is bolted to will stand up is a completely different question, answered by a structural engineer and a licensed contractor, and nothing we do changes it.
We do not certify seismic restraint
We install, we photograph the work and we tell you what was done. Sign-off, calculations and anything an insurer or an inspector will rely on belongs to somebody qualified to put their name to it.
We do not do electrical panel work
Where a heat pump needs more capacity or a free circuit, that is a licensed electrician’s job. We will tell you exactly what the equipment needs, in amps, in writing, so the electrician has something real to quote from.
We do not take the roof on
Water arriving at equipment in an attic or on a roof is frequently a roofing problem with a heating symptom. We will find it, photograph it and say what we think it is. We will not repair it, and we will not install under an active leak.
We do not advise on rebates or tax credits
Programmes change, have conditions and are run by people who are not us. We will give you accurate equipment figures and whatever documentation an application needs. We are not tax advisers and we will not tell you what a credit is worth to you.
We do not publish reviews or a founding date
There are none on this site because we are not going to invent any.
Asked often enough to write down
Should I turn the gas off after an earthquake?
Only if you have a reason to, and this is narrower than most people believe. The standard guidance from utilities and emergency agencies is to shut the supply off at the meter only if you smell gas, hear it escaping, or see damage that suggests a leak — and then to leave the building and call from outside. The reason not to do it as a precaution is that once it is off, only the utility should turn it back on, and after a large event that can take a very long time. Know where your shut-off is, keep a wrench beside it, and do not use it for practice.
Does strapping the water heater make my house safer in an earthquake?
It makes that appliance safer, and that is genuinely worth having — a full tank is heavy and narrow, it is the appliance most likely to fall, and when it falls it takes the gas line with it. What it does not do is tell you anything about the building. If the house has never been bolted to its foundation or had a short stud wall braced, that is the larger question by a long way, and no amount of strapping substitutes for it. Anybody who lets you conflate the two is doing you harm.
Our house has no ducts anywhere. What are the options?
Three, honestly. Ductless heads sized per room will condition the rooms they are in and nothing around a corner, which is a placement decision rather than a fault. A small-duct high-velocity system will run in tighter spaces and is more disruptive and more expensive than it first appears. Or you condition part of the house properly and accept that one room is different. Forcing conventional ductwork through a shingle or craftsman house frequently costs more than the equipment, and we would rather say that than quote it and let you find out.
Is our wall furnace dangerous?
Not automatically, and not automatically fine either. There is a persistent idea that these appliances should all be replaced, which is frequently said by people who would like to sell a system. A wall or floor furnace that passes a combustion analysis, vents properly and has its clearances respected is a working appliance, and a great many houses here are heated perfectly well by one. What does want checking is the flue, because it runs in sections inside the wall and sections separate, and that is not something you can see from the front.
Do you do the foundation bolting as well?
No. That is structural work — a licensed contractor’s job, on an engineer’s detail where the house needs one — and we are a mechanical contractor. We are not paid by anybody who does it and we do not take referrals for it. What we will do is the equipment side properly and tell you plainly that it is not a substitute. California has run assistance programmes for exactly this kind of retrofit and the position changes, so check the current one rather than relying on what somebody told you a few years ago.
We run a shop with flats above. Will the new unit be a problem for them?
It can be, and it is much cheaper to settle before the equipment is ordered than after the first complaint. A condenser bolted to a shared structure transmits through it, and a unit that is fine on an industrial roof is not fine under somebody’s bedroom. Siting, isolation and run schedule all change. We will measure sound pressure before and after and give both parties the figures with the date and the method. What we will not do is take a side, or write one version of the findings for one of you.
Which areas do you cover?
Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Oakland, Kensington, Richmond and Piedmont.
1224 Tenth St
Berkeley, CA 94710. Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 4pm.
We cover Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Oakland, Kensington, Richmond and Piedmont.