Questions
Twenty answers, none of them written by a marketing department
If a question here has an answer that sounds like a sales line, tell us and we will rewrite it. That offer is genuine.
When something is wrong right now
The questions people ask at 10pm in January.
The heat is off. What should I check before I call?
Three things, in this order. Is the thermostat set to heat and calling for a temperature above the room? Is the furnace switch, which looks like a light switch on or near the unit, still on? Is there a flashing light on the control board behind the furnace door, and if so what is the pattern? That last one is genuinely useful to us and often tells us which part to bring.
How quickly can somebody get here?
Same day through the heating season, seven days a week, for a house without heat. If the house is below 60 degrees, or there is an infant, an older adult or someone unwell in it, say so on the phone and you move up the queue. Comfort plan members sit ahead of the general queue as standard.
My carbon monoxide alarm is going off.
Get everybody outside, leave a door open, and call the gas utility first, then us. Do not wait for a scheduled appointment and do not go back in to investigate. This is the one thing in this trade that is genuinely dangerous, and the correct first call is the utility, not a contractor.
Water is coming out of my furnace.
On a high-efficiency furnace this is almost always the condensate drain backing up rather than a leak, and it is common. Switch the furnace off at its switch to stop it making more, put a towel down, and call. It is usually a blocked trap or hose and it is a short visit.
Do you charge extra at night or at the weekend?
There is an after-hours rate for genuinely out-of-hours calls, and it is on the invoice as its own line rather than folded quietly into the repair price. Comfort plan members do not pay it at all, at any hour, on any day.
Prices, quotes and the money side
What things cost and how we talk about it.
Do you charge for a quote?
Not for a replacement quote, including the Manual J load calculation that goes with it. A diagnostic visit on a system that is misbehaving does carry a fee, because that is real work with instruments, and we tell you the amount when you book rather than at the door.
Will you tell me the price before you start?
Always, and it is a fixed number for the job rather than an hourly rate. If we open something up and find a second problem, we stop and give you a new number before continuing. Nobody should be watching a meter run in their own basement.
Repair or replace, how do I decide?
Roughly: if the repair is more than about a third of a replacement, the unit is past fifteen years old, and there are signs of wear on the heat exchanger or the compressor, replacement usually wins. If it is a small part on an otherwise sound unit, fix it. We give you both prices and the reasoning, and we do not pretend the answer is obvious when it is a genuine judgement call.
Do you offer financing?
Yes, through third-party lenders, with both promotional deferred-interest periods and longer fixed-rate terms. We show the total cost of credit rather than just a monthly figure. See the rebates and financing page for the details.
Are your technicians paid commission?
No. Nobody here earns a percentage of what you buy. It is the single structural thing that decides whether a company recommends a repair or a replacement, and we would rather it not be a question you have to worry about.
Equipment, efficiency and the acronyms
AFUE, SEER2, HSPF2, MERV, and what any of it means for your house.
What is AFUE?
Annual Fuel Utilisation Efficiency: the percentage of the gas you buy that ends up as heat in your house over a season. A 95 percent AFUE furnace turns 95 cents of every dollar into heat and vents the rest. In a climate with a heating season as long as ours, the difference between 80 and 96 percent is a lot of money over the life of the unit.
SEER2 and HSPF2, in one sentence each?
SEER2 is seasonal cooling efficiency and HSPF2 is seasonal heating efficiency for a heat pump. Both replaced their predecessors in 2023 and are measured under conditions closer to a real duct system, so the numbers are slightly lower than the old SEER and HSPF for the same machine. Both are calculated against a national average climate, which is why we also look at the manufacturer capacity tables at 17 and at 5 below.
What MERV filter should I be using?
In a standard one inch slot, MERV 8 to 11. Going higher in a one inch slot costs airflow you cannot spare and makes every other complaint worse. If you want MERV 13, fit a four or five inch media cabinet first: same filtration, far lower resistance, and you change it once or twice a year instead of monthly.
What is happening with refrigerants?
New residential equipment now ships with R-454B in place of R-410A, as part of the phase-down of high global warming potential refrigerants. Your existing R-410A system is fine, remains legal and remains serviceable, though R-410A pricing has been rising. The practical impact is on partial replacements, since the two refrigerants are not interchangeable within one system.
Do you install any brand or just one?
We install several and service everything. Installation quality matters more than brand at the quality tiers we work in, and any manufacturer will tell you the same thing in private. Where brands genuinely differ for a Minnesota house is cold-weather heat pump performance, and there we do have opinions.
Old houses, cold rooms and comfort
The questions that are really about how the house behaves.
One room is always cold. Is that fixable?
Usually, and usually not by turning the thermostat up. The order we work through is: is a damper or register closed, is there enough return air in that room, is the duct to it undersized or crushed, and is the room losing heat faster than the rest of the house through an uninsulated wall or an attic knee wall. Only after all four do we start talking about adding a zone.
My 1918 house has radiators. What are my options?
For cooling and for supplemental heat, ductless mini splits are the realistic answer, because there is nowhere to run a duct in balloon framing. High-velocity small-duct systems exist and can work in some houses, but they are expensive and noisy compared with ductless. We would rather show you both than pretend there is only one.
Why does the house feel drafty when the furnace runs?
Often because a furnace pulling combustion air from inside the house creates a slight negative pressure that drags cold air in through every leak. A sealed combustion furnace, which draws its air from outside through a second pipe, removes that effect entirely. It is one of the more noticeable comfort improvements in an older house.
What causes ice dams, and is it a heating problem?
Partly. Ice dams form when heat escaping into the attic melts snow on the roof, the water runs to the cold eave and refreezes. The heat is often coming from air leaking around light fittings, the attic hatch and duct penetrations, and sometimes from uninsulated ducts running through the attic. Insulating and sealing those ducts is our part of it. The rest is an insulation and air-sealing job.
Do you work on rentals and duplexes?
Yes, and a lot of what we do is duplexes. We will always tell a tenant honestly what we found even when the landlord is paying, and we will not report a working system as failed because somebody would prefer it were.
Not here?
Ask us directly. If it turns out to be a question other people are also asking, it ends up on this page with your name kept out of it.
Come in out of the cold
Tell us which room is wrong and when you are home. We will come and look, and we will tell you the price before anything gets opened up.