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Houses, townhouses and condominiums
Attached homes, narrow side yards, shared walls and an association. The mechanical part is rarely the hard part.
Where the outdoor unit can go
In a detached house on a quarter-acre this is barely a question. In an attached home with a four-foot side yard it is most of the job, and it is decided by four things at once: service access, clearance for the unit to breathe, what the association permits, and whose bedroom window is on the other side.
We work that out before quoting, with a tape measure, and we put the result on paper. A unit crammed into a space with no clearance will run hot, cost more to run and fail early. A unit placed under a neighbour’s window will be a problem for years regardless of how well it performs.
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.
Annual service
Charge verified properly, coil and drain cleaned, combustion tested on gas heat, and the readings written down so next year means something.
Ductless
Where there is nowhere to run duct, which in attached housing is often. Sized per room, with the line set routed where it will not become somebody’s objection.
Condensate
Primary drain, secondary pan and float switch, tested. In a condominium a condensate failure is somebody else’s ceiling, which changes the stakes.
Airflow
Static pressure and delivered airflow measured. In a three-storey townhouse the top floor is usually the complaint and usually not the equipment.
The submission
Dimensions, placement, sound ratings and fixings written up for your association, before anything is ordered.
Three things that come up constantly
Most complaints here are noise
Not performance. A unit that works perfectly and sits eight feet from a neighbour’s bedroom is a dispute. Placement, isolation mounts, a screen and occasionally a different model are all cheaper than the dispute.
Three storeys, one system
The top floor is warm and the ground floor is cold, and the instinct is to buy more capacity. Usually it is duct sizing, a return path or a damper, and all three are measurable before anybody spends.
Condensate above a neighbour
In a stacked condominium the pan above your ceiling is not yours. We test float switches as routine and we will tell a building manager plainly when a shared drain line is the real problem.
We will not install something that breaches your rules
If your association has said no, or has rules that a proposal clearly breaks, we will not fit it and hope nobody notices. That is not caution for its own sake: work that gets ordered out afterwards is removed at somebody’s expense, and that somebody is you.
What we will do is produce the documents, suggest alternatives that fit the rules, and tell you honestly when we think a committee is being asked the wrong question.