Serving Minneapolis
This is where we are based and where most of our work is. South Minneapolis in particular is a city of 1910 to 1930 bungalows and foursquares, and they share a specific set of problems that we see almost every week.
Sizing, ductwork and the right equipment all follow from what kind of house it is, so this is where every job actually starts.
One and a half storeys, a finished upstairs that was often an afterthought, and a gravity furnace conversion in the basement whose octopus ducts were never really redesigned for forced air. The upstairs bedroom is the room people call about.
Square, tall, balloon framed, with no continuous wall cavity you can safely run a duct through. Beautiful houses and genuinely difficult to retrofit. This is where ductless earns its reputation.
Single storey, easier ductwork, and usually on its third furnace. The common finding here is a furnace two sizes too big for a house that has since been insulated and had its windows replaced.
In rough order of frequency, from our own dispatch board rather than from a keyword list.
One central return serving a whole two-storey house is the single most common finding in South Minneapolis. It caps how much air the system can move upstairs no matter what equipment is fitted.
Enormous octopus trunks sized for a coal-fired gravity system, later fitted with a blower. They move air very unevenly and the far bedroom always loses.
Original or early replacement windows plus a humidifier set once in October. We reset the humidistat against the outdoor temperature and the frost stops.
A converted upper floor with one register and a knee wall with no insulation behind it. Ductless is usually the answer, and often just one head.
Our office is in Whittier, which means most of South Minneapolis is a ten to twenty minute drive even in weather. That is not a marketing line, it is the actual reason we can offer same-day heat calls here in January when the roads are bad.
The other Minneapolis-specific thing worth knowing is the parking. In the older neighbourhoods, on a snow emergency, a service van needs somewhere legal to stop for two hours. If your street is tight, tell the dispatcher and we will plan around it rather than circling the block.
10 to 25 minutes from our Whittier office
Tell us the address and which room is wrong. If a van is already nearby, we will often get to you sooner than the window we quote.