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Houses
Post-war single storey with attic ducts, block walls and, very often, a garage that is now a room.
Which rooms actually get used, and when
It sounds like small talk and it is the most useful thing we ask. A house that is empty from eight to six has different problems from a house where somebody is home all day. A back bedroom that is somebody’s room rather than a store room has to work at night, which is a different job from working at four in the afternoon.
Then we measure: the airflow at the registers in the rooms that matter, the static pressure across the system, and the duct in the attic. Between those three, most comfort complaints in these houses are explained without anybody buying equipment.
Six things
No cooling, no heat
Checked in order of cost. Capacitors, contactors, float switches, filters, thermostats and breakers before anything expensive is on the table.
Balancing
Dampers set, registers checked, return paths sorted. In a house where the room use has changed, this is the first thing to do and the last thing anybody offers.
Duct repair and sealing
Measured, then put right where the measurement says to. Crushed flex, a boot that has come off, a return leaking in a 130-degree attic.
Condensate
Primary drain, secondary pan and float switch, tested. With a coil above a ceiling this is the cheapest insurance in the house.
Ductless
For a converted garage or an added bedroom that the existing system was never going to reach properly. Its own control, its own capacity.
Replacement
Sized from the house as it is used now, permitted and tested, with the ductwork assessed first and the free answers tried before anything is quoted.
Three things about converted space
It is a harder room than it looks
An uninsulated slab, a wall that was an exterior wall, and frequently a roof with very little above it. It takes more to condition than its floor area suggests, and tying it into the existing system with one small run is how it becomes the room nobody sits in.
Air has to be able to leave
A room with a supply and no return will not work whatever you feed it. A door undercut, a transfer grille or a proper return — one of the three, and none of them is expensive.
If it is still partly a garage
Where a converted space still shares a wall with cars, fuel or solvents, that boundary wants sealing properly. It is worth doing for what moves through it, not only for the temperature.
A bigger system will not fix a distribution problem
If one room is wrong and the rest of the house is fine, the machine is working. Adding capacity sends more air to the registers that are already fine and the same amount to the one that is not. It is the most expensive way to change nothing.
We will tell you that even when you have already decided to replace, and then we will size the replacement properly and fix the distribution as part of it.