Somebody has to decide where the air goes
We work on heating, cooling and ventilation in Newport Beach and the coastal towns either side of it. A great deal of what we are asked to fix was decided during a remodel, by somebody who was not thinking about air — and by the time it is finished, the cheap moment has passed.
Five kinds of remodel crossed with four points in the process. What each one does to the air, who usually decides it, and the two weeks in a build when changing your mind is nearly free.
In a house that is open to the framing, moving a duct run is an hour of work. In a finished house it is a ceiling, a plasterer, a painter and a fortnight of somebody living in a hotel. The physical work is the same. Everything around it is not.
So the useful time to have this conversation is while there are still drawings, and the second most useful is while the walls are open. We would rather be a two-hour visit in February than a large invoice in September.
Flush and linear grilles almost always cost you airflow. They look better — genuinely better, and we understand why people want them — but they have less free area than what they replace, and the system does not know that it is being tasteful. That is a decision you are entitled to make. It is not a decision you should make without being told.
Six things
No cooling and no heat, checked in order of cost. Capacitors, contactors, float switches, filters, thermostats and breakers before anything expensive is on the table.
Charge verified by superheat and subcooling, coil and drain cleaned, combustion tested on gas heat, and every reading written down.
Duct layout, register placement and load calculation done with the architect and the builder, before the ceilings close.
Static pressure and leakage tested, not looked at. A remodelled house usually has both old duct and new duct, and the join is where the trouble is.
For the converted garage, the guest suite over the garage and the room that was never going to be served properly from the existing system.
Offices, medical and dental suites, showrooms and restaurants along the coast. Rooftop and split systems, extract, and planned maintenance twice a year.
Houses on the peninsula and the bluffs, condominiums with shared walls and difficult roofs, and a great many houses that have been remodelled two or three times. We measure what is there before proposing anything, because in this town what is there is rarely what the drawings say.
Offices around the airport, medical and dental suites, showrooms and restaurants. A written record per unit, planned maintenance twice a year, and a straight answer about what the landlord is actually responsible for.
Five things this website does not print
| Prices | A remodel job is defined by access, and access is different in every house on every street here. A figure on a web page would be a guess with a confident face. |
| A response time | We do not publish one. We will tell you where you are in the queue when you ring, and say if somebody else can get to you sooner. |
| Savings percentages | It depends on what you had, what you set it to and how the house is used. Anybody printing a number has chosen the flattering case. |
| Reviews and ratings | There are none on this site. When there are real ones they will be somewhere you can check them, under their own names. |
Asked most often
When in a remodel should we involve you?
There are two windows. The first is while there are still drawings, when a register moves for nothing and a beam that would block a duct run can still be a different beam. The second is after demolition and before the ceilings close, which is usually a week or two and is the last time anything is easy. Almost every expensive problem we see in a remodelled house was decided in one of those two windows by somebody who did not know they were deciding it.
Our designer wants flush linear grilles. Is that a problem?
It is a cost rather than a prohibition. Flush and linear registers generally have less free area than what they replace, so they restrict airflow, and the system does not know it is being tasteful. Sometimes the answer is simply more of them, or a larger duct behind them. What matters is that somebody works it out in advance rather than discovering it in August. We will not talk you out of them; we will tell you what they need.
We vaulted a ceiling and the room has never been right. Why?
Because the attic that was removed is usually where the ductwork and sometimes the air handler lived, and because vaulting changes the room itself — more volume, usually more glass, and warm air collecting where nobody is. Register positions that suited a flat ceiling frequently do not suit a vaulted one. It is fixable, and the fix depends on what access remains, which is why we measure before proposing.
Should the new room go on the existing system?
Sometimes, and it is worth asking properly rather than assuming. New floor area is new load, but the bigger issue is usually the ductwork: extending from a plenum sized for the old house often means the new rooms get air at the expense of the old ones. For a converted garage or a guest suite, a separate ductless system is frequently the better answer — smaller job for us, better result for you.
Does living near the water really matter for the equipment?
Yes, and the honest version is less dramatic than it is usually sold. Equipment near the water corrodes faster, which changes the maintenance interval and, on a replacement, whether a coastal coil coating is worth it at your particular address. Three streets back from the sand is a different proposition from the peninsula. We will tell you where your house sits on that scale rather than use it as an argument.
Which areas do you cover?
Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, Tustin and Newport Coast.
MacArthur Court, Newport Beach
4594 MacArthur Ct, Newport Beach, CA 92660. We cover Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, Tustin and Newport Coast.
Monday to Friday, 8am to 4.30pm. (650) 421-0782