Five things, each written out in full — including the part where we tell you what it does not cover.
Diagnose first. Quote second. Nothing gets replaced on a guess.
A flat diagnostic fee brings a technician out to find the cause, take readings and tell you what is actually wrong. If you go ahead with the repair, that fee comes off the bill.
The reason we charge it is the reason it works. A free call has to be paid for somewhere, and it usually gets paid for by finding a reason to sell you a system. Charging for the diagnosis means the incentive is to diagnose.
When a repair is not worth doing, you will hear that plainly: a failed compressor on a system past its service life, a leak in an evaporator coil that will cost most of a replacement, a part that is no longer made. You will get both numbers — repair and replace — and the decision stays yours.
Refrigerant is not consumed. A system that is low is a system that is leaking. Anyone who tops it up every summer without finding the leak is selling you the same gas over and over and venting it into the air in between. We find the leak or we tell you the coil is finished.
Sized to the house as it actually is. Sited where the wind will do it least harm.
In this valley the attic is the hardest place in the house, and the whole duct system lives in it.
Air that has been cooled downstairs has to travel through a space that spends every summer afternoon far hotter than the rooms it is serving. Every leak in that run is cooled air paid for and lost, and every unsupported sag is airflow the far bedroom never gets.
The work is unglamorous and it is usually the highest-value thing we can do in an existing house: seal the joints properly rather than with tape that lets go in attic heat, support the runs so they are not kinked, insulate what is bare, and add return air where there is only one central return fighting closed bedroom doors.
We repair, seal, insulate and replace ductwork. We do not sell duct cleaning as a product, because in most houses it does not fix the complaint that prompted the call. If we find something up there that genuinely needs cleaning — rodent contamination, construction debris — we will tell you and name someone who does it properly.
An interval that matches your lot, not one copied out of a manual written for somewhere else.
Condenser coil condition and cleaning, evaporator coil, condensate drain cleared and tested, refrigerant charge measured against the manufacturer's figures, electrical connections checked and torqued, blower and filter, and a look at the duct while we are in the attic.
Once a year for a sheltered unit. Twice for one on an exposed lot, near open ground or close to construction. We tell you which yours is after we have stood in the side yard, not before.
Written up, with photographs of anything we want you to see. If there is nothing to report, the report says so — and we do not use the visit as a sales appointment.
It will not make an undersized system adequate, it will not fix a duct layout that was wrong when it went in, and it will not extend the life of a compressor that is already failing. It keeps a sound system sound and finds problems while they are still small. Anything sold as more than that is being sold as something else.
Storefronts, offices, suites and small industrial units around Corona and Norco.
A package unit on a roof takes everything a ground-level condenser takes and then some: full sun on all sides, nothing to break the wind, and grit that arrives from every direction. The difference is that nobody notices it until the space is uncomfortable and there are customers in it.
So the commercial side of this business is mostly about access and scheduling. We service before the season rather than during it, we work early where a tenant cannot close, and we keep a written record per unit so the next visit starts from what the last one found rather than from scratch.
What we do not do is take on buildings with more units than a two-van shop can look after properly. If your property needs a larger contractor, we will say so in the first conversation rather than in the third summer.
Describe what the system is doing. We will tell you on the phone whether it sounds like a repair, a service or a replacement conversation.