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Cooling that has to work in July and heating that has to work in January
Highlands Ranch, Littleton, Lone Tree and Centennial. Air conditioning, evaporative coolers, furnaces, heat pumps and the duct work underneath all of them.
Keep the swamp cooler, or go refrigerated?
Plenty of houses here still run an evaporative cooler, and for most of the season it does the job for a fraction of the running cost. The argument for changing is not that it is old technology — it is that there are weeks each summer when it cannot get the house comfortable, and those weeks are the ones people remember.
We will tell you where your house sits, and what each option actually involves — because a conversion is not only an outdoor unit. It usually means duct work, an indoor coil, electrical work and closing up a roof opening.
- Keeping itAnnual pads, pump, float, belt and bearings, plus a proper winter shutdown. Cheap to run, cheap to service, genuinely effective most of the summer.
- Adding refrigerated coolingWorks in any humidity, dehumidifies, needs ducts that can carry it and costs considerably more to run.
- Running bothSome houses here do, using the cooler for most of the season and the AC for the humid fortnight. It is a real option and we will say when it makes sense.
The calls we take most
- It is not coolingSame-day where we can. Bring the thermostat reading and whether the outdoor unit is running — it narrows things before we arrive.
- The upstairs is unbearableOn a single system in a two-storey house this is almost always duct and return sizing. It is measurable, and measuring it is the first thing we do.
- The cooler smellsUsually the pads or standing water in the pan. Sometimes it is the drain. Either way it is a service item rather than a fault.
- No heatFilters, flame sensors, pressure switches and ignition faults account for most winter calls, and none of them is expensive if caught early.
- The bill jumpedOn a heat pump, backup heat running when it should not. On a furnace, usually a filter or a schedule that was never changed.
- It is twenty years oldWe will tell you what it has left and what to budget, in writing, rather than quoting a replacement on the spot.
Two calls that go somewhere else first
- A carbon monoxide alarm soundingEverybody out of the house, then call 911 or the gas utility from outside. Not us first, and do not go back in to open windows.
- A smell of gasThe same. Leave the appliance alone, get out, ring from outside.
Once it has been made safe we will come and find out what caused it. Everything else goes in the diary.
Most of what people call a capacity problem is not
A great deal of the cooling paid for in this area is delivered through an attic in July, when that attic is considerably hotter than the air being pushed through it. Leaky joints, crushed flex and insulation that has slipped all cost you before the air arrives.
We measure at the registers before and after, so the work has a number attached and you can see what it bought.