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Houses in Sunnyvale and the north valley
Post-war ranch stock with the ducts underfoot or overhead, mid-century houses with almost no insulation anywhere, and back rooms that have quietly become offices full of equipment.
An hour and a half, and a sheet you keep
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.
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.
And where a room has equipment in it, we add up what that equipment is producing before anybody sizes anything. It is on the labels, in watts, and it takes ten minutes. A room with a rack in it is not a bedroom with a warm spot.
Four findings that account for most of it
The office has more load in it than a bedroom ever had
A room converted to an office with several machines, monitors and a rack is carrying a heat load nobody counted when the duct system was designed, and it behaves accordingly. This is measurable rather than mysterious, and the answer is frequently a dedicated head for that one room rather than anything done to the whole house.
The ducts are under the floor and leaking
A great deal of the older stock here has ductwork in a crawl space with joints that were never sealed and sections that have come off. Measured leakage is routinely a large fraction of total airflow, and on the return side it means the house is breathing whatever is down there.
The system is bigger than the house needs
Oversizing is the fault we measure most often. A unit that is too large satisfies the thermostat quickly, shuts off and never runs long enough to move air around the house, so the room furthest from the return never catches up. A room-by-room load calculation settles it in an afternoon.
One return, several rooms, doors shut
Air that goes into a room has to get back out. A single central return with closed doors forces the air through the gap under the door, pressure builds and the airflow collapses. Transfer grilles or a second return are cheap and are frequently the whole fix — and they matter most in exactly the room that has equipment in it.
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.
- Load calculation and replacement
Room by room, with equipment load counted rather than guessed.
- Ductless for one difficult room
An office, a converted garage or a back room that needs its own temperature. Sized from the load and sited where it can be serviced.
- Duct repair and sealing
Leakage measured, joints sealed, crawl-space runs insulated, returns and transfer grilles added.
- Gas appliance safety
Combustion analysis, heat exchanger inspection, flue checked as installed, carbon monoxide alarms fitted where there is none.
- Annual service
The same readings every year on the same sheet, so a slow change is visible before it becomes a breakdown.
Three things we will not do in your house
Treat a room full of equipment as a comfort problem
If a machine is making the heat, extraction at the source is looked at before cooling the room it escapes into. That order is not a preference, it is the difference between one bill and two.
Condemn a heat exchanger without showing you
It is a real reason to shut a furnace down and 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 a second opinion before spending anything.
Guarantee a temperature for equipment
A comfort system holds a room within a comfort band. Equipment that must not exceed a number needs monitoring and an alarm at minimum, and we will tell you when what you actually want is a different kind of contractor.
Tell us what the room is doing
Which room, what time of day, how long it has been like that, and whether there is equipment in it. 417 San Aleso Ave, Sunnyvale. Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.