We will tell you what is wrong. We will not tell you what you are covered for.
Heating, cooling and ventilation for Burbank houses and Burbank working buildings. We measure what is installed, write down what we found, and say plainly which parts of your problem belong to a different profession — because in this city a surprising number of them do.
Three questions, asked in this order
They are asked in this order because each answer changes what the next one is worth. A diagnosis given before the first one is answered is a guess with a price on it.
What is actually installed?
Every unit found, the rating plates photographed, model and serial numbers written down and the manufacture date read off the serial. On a Burbank house that has changed hands twice this is frequently the first time anybody has done it, and it takes twenty minutes.
What do the instruments say?
Static pressure across the filter and coil, airflow, refrigerant charge against the manufacturer’s target, temperature split, and a combustion analysis on anything that burns gas. Numbers, dated, with the conditions they were taken in.
Whose problem is this?
Some of what gets called an HVAC problem is a roof, a panel, a structural opening, a lease, an insurance policy or a planning question. We say which, early, and we do not take on the parts that are not ours.
Houses
Magnolia Park bungalows and Spanish revival houses with plaster walls and no cavity to run a duct through. Mid-century ranch houses up toward the hills with the original ducts baking in a July attic. Post-war stock in the flats where a single central return is asked to serve five rooms with all the doors shut. Additions and garage conversions on the end of a system sized for the house before they existed.
The valley gets genuinely hot and stays hot into October, which means an underperforming system here is not an inconvenience for two weeks a year.
Working buildings
Offices along Alameda and Olive, ground-floor retail on Magnolia, light industrial and storage south of the airport, and this city’s particular speciality — rooms where the air has to be quiet. Edit suites, audio bays, rehearsal rooms and small stages are ordinary mechanical jobs with one extra constraint, and it is the constraint everything else has to bend around.
Quiet air is a design problem: duct velocity, fitting choice, equipment location and isolation, measured rather than promised.
Somebody has told you to put it through the insurance
Five ways equipment gets damaged, crossed with the four kinds of cover people turn out to have. What we can document, what we cannot, and the one arrangement that people call insurance and that is not insurance at all. We write down what we found and what it would cost. We do not write reports designed to support a claim, and we will not tell you what your policy covers.
The work, plainly
- Diagnosis
- Instruments, not opinion. Manometer, anemometer, gauges, combustion analyser, clamp meter. The readings are yours, on paper, whether or not you go ahead with anything.
- Repair
- What it is, what it costs, and what it does not fix. Replacement is discussed after a repair has a number against it, not instead of one.
- Replacement and installation
- Sized from a room-by-room load calculation on the building as it stands. Ducted, ductless or heat pump, chosen from the numbers rather than from the plate on the unit coming out.
- Ductwork
- Leakage measured, joints sealed, attic runs insulated, returns and transfer grilles added where a house has one return and five rooms, registers balanced against a measured target.
- Quiet air
- For edit suites, audio rooms and any space where the air has to be unheard: duct velocity, fitting selection, equipment siting and vibration isolation, with readings before and after. We measure sound pressure. We do not certify acoustics.
- 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.
- Planned maintenance
- For houses and for premises, with the same readings every visit, so a slow change shows up as a change rather than as a breakdown in August.
What we will not do
Most of this list exists because somebody has asked. Saying it here means nobody has to have the conversation twice.
- We will not write a report to support a claim. We write down what we found and what it costs to put right, and that document is yours to give to anybody you like. What we will not do is write it to a conclusion somebody wants, describe damage we did not see, or guess at a cause we cannot establish.
- We will not tell you what your policy covers. That is between you, your policy and your adjuster. We are not loss adjusters, we are not on any insurer’s panel, and an opinion from us about cover would be worth nothing.
- We will not condemn a heat exchanger without showing you why. It is a real reason to shut a furnace 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 have somebody else look first.
- We will not recommend replacement on age alone. Age changes the arithmetic on a repair. It is not a fault.
- We will not certify acoustics. We can measure sound pressure before and after and we can build quiet air properly. A room signed off to a standard is an acoustic consultant’s work.
- We will not quote a price before we have seen it. A number given on the telephone is a guess dressed as a quote, and it is always a low one.
- We will not publish reviews, ratings or a founding date. There are none on this site because we are not going to invent any.
- Until it is on this page, treat the site as unfinished and ask us on the telephone.
Asked often enough to write down
Our air conditioning was damaged. Will you help with the insurance claim?
We will help with the part of it that is ours. We will find and identify the equipment, measure it, photograph it, cost the repair or replacement, and where a cause can honestly be established from the evidence we will say what it is. All of that goes to you in writing and you can give it to anybody. What we will not do is tell you whether you are covered, write a report to a conclusion somebody wants, or describe damage we did not see. We are a contractor, not a loss adjuster, and an opinion from us about cover would be worth nothing to you or to the insurer.
Is a home warranty the same as insurance?
No, and the difference matters. A home warranty or service contract is an agreement with a company to arrange repairs, not a policy responding to an event. The company dispatches a contractor from its own network, so ring them before you ring anybody else — work done outside that process is usually yours to pay for. The company also decides what the agreement covers, and we have no standing in that decision. Where we can be useful is an independent written diagnosis with measurements, so you know what is actually wrong with your equipment rather than relying on one account of it.
Why is the upstairs so much hotter than the rest of the house?
Usually because the ducts serving it run through an attic that is far hotter than the outside air on a valley afternoon, and every foot of that run loses cooling before it reaches a register. After that come the ordinary suspects: a crushed or disconnected flexible duct, no route for air to leave the room once it is in there, and registers balanced by a previous occupant in the wrong direction. We measure the airflow at that room’s registers before anybody talks about equipment, because a bigger unit pushed through the same duct changes very little.
Can you make an edit suite quiet?
We can design and install air that is quiet, and we can measure sound pressure in the room before and after so the change is a figure rather than an impression. Quiet air comes from duct velocity, fitting selection, where the equipment sits, how it is isolated and what is lined — all decided at design, and none of it fixed afterwards by turning the fan down, because a system running at half speed is not conditioning the room. What we will not do is certify the room to an acoustic criterion. On a serious room an acoustic consultant should be involved before we are.
Our house is 1920s plaster with no ducts anywhere. What are the options?
Honestly, there are three, and the first thing worth accepting is that forcing conventional ductwork through a house like that often costs more than the equipment. Ductless heads sized per room will condition the rooms they are in and nothing around a corner. A small-duct high-velocity system will run in tighter spaces and is more disruptive and more expensive than it first looks. Or you condition some of the house properly and accept that one room is different. We will price whichever you want and tell you what each one really involves.
Do you give a price over the telephone?
No, and we would be careful of anybody who does. A price given before the visit is a guess dressed as a quote, and it is always lower than the eventual figure. What we will tell you on the telephone is what we would measure, roughly how long the first visit takes and what the visit itself costs, so there is no surprise in either direction.
Which areas do you cover?
Burbank, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Glendale, Sun Valley, Studio City, Sunland-Tujunga and La Crescenta.
4111 W Alameda Ave
Burbank, CA 91505. Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 4.30pm.
We cover Burbank, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Glendale, Sun Valley, Studio City, Sunland-Tujunga and La Crescenta.