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Five things, written out in full — including what each one does not cover and when we would tell you not to buy it.
01
ADU heating & cooling
New detached and attached units, from design through commissioning.
This is the work the business is built around, so it has a page of its own rather than a paragraph here. The short version:
We calculate the load from the drawings rather than from a rule of thumb per square foot, specify equipment that can run below that number as well as at it, settle the outdoor unit position before the walls close, and give your electrician a written requirement early enough to be useful.
Then we come twice: rough-in before the walls close, and commissioning at the end. Both dates are agreed with whoever is running the programme.
What we need from you
- A floor plan and an elevation, if they exist. We can answer most of the important questions from those.
- Who is running the project, and who we should be talking to about dates.
- Whether the unit gets its own electrical service or is fed from the main house.
- Whether anyone is living in the main house while the work happens.
What we are not
We are one trade on somebody else's project. We do not design ADUs, we do not act as general contractor, we do not pull the building permit for the unit itself and we do not do panel or subpanel work. We pull the mechanical permit for our scope and we coordinate — that is the honest extent of it.
02
Ductless systems
One outdoor unit, one or more indoor heads, and a bundle of lines between them about the diameter of a pencil.
It heats and it cools with the same equipment, it can be specified very small, and it can run at part load rather than only flat out or off. In a small, well-sealed building those three properties are worth more than anything else on the market.
- Single head
- One outdoor unit, one indoor unitThe right answer for a studio or a one-room conversion with a reasonably open plan. Simplest, cheapest, and the easiest to keep quiet.
- Multi head
- One outdoor unit, several indoor unitsFor a one-bedroom unit where a closed door means the bedroom will otherwise never match the living space. More money and more line route, and worth it more often than people expect.
- Line route
- Decided before the walls close, or it goes on the outsideInside a wall or a chase it disappears. Added afterwards it runs in a line cover on the elevation of a brand new building, which is a permanent aesthetic decision taken for a temporary scheduling reason.
- Condensate
- Gravity if the level allows, a pump if it does notEvery indoor head produces water when it cools. Where it goes is settled at design. A pump is fine and normal; a pump nobody planned for is a box on a wall in a finished room.
- Noise
- Almost entirely a siting questionModern outdoor units are quiet. What makes them a problem is standing three feet from a bedroom window on a narrow lot, and that is decided by where it goes rather than by which one you buy.
03
Garage conversions
A different problem from a purpose-built unit, and one people underestimate because the building already exists.
A purpose-built ADU is designed as a dwelling: insulated walls, a proper roof assembly, sensible glazing. A converted garage is a structure that was built to keep rain off a car, and every one of those things has to be added to it.
That changes the load calculation substantially, and it changes it in a direction people do not expect — a converted garage often needs more capacity per square foot than a new detached unit twice its size.
The four things we look at
- The slab. Uninsulated, usually at or below grade, and a large surface. It is a real part of the load and it is the part most often ignored.
- The old door opening. Whatever fills it is usually the weakest part of the envelope, and it is often the wall that faces the street and the afternoon.
- Ceiling height. Low, and sometimes lower after the ceiling assembly is upgraded. It decides what kind of indoor unit will fit and look right.
- The shared wall. An attached garage borrows some of its condition from the house. That is helpful for the load and unhelpful for sound, and both are worth knowing about early.
When we say no
If a conversion is going ahead with no insulation to the slab, nothing meaningful in the old door wall and a single-glazed window, we will tell you that the HVAC cannot rescue it — and roughly what it will cost to run if you proceed anyway.
We will still do the work if that is your decision. What we will not do is let you believe that a larger machine solves an envelope problem.
04
Repair
Ductless and ducted. Diagnostic first, quote second.
A flat diagnostic fee brings a technician out to find the cause and take readings, credited against the repair if you go ahead. We charge it because a free call gets paid for somewhere, and it usually gets paid for by finding a reason to sell a system.
The calls we get most on ductless equipment are water coming from an indoor head — nearly always a blocked drain or a pump, rarely the machine — and a head that smells, which is usually the blower wheel and the drain pan rather than anything mechanical.
We also get called a lot to systems somebody else oversized. That is worth saying plainly: the fix for an oversized system is rarely another machine. Sometimes it is a control change, sometimes it is a second zone, and sometimes the honest answer is that it will keep short-cycling until it is replaced with something smaller.
On refrigerant
Refrigerant is not consumed. A system that is low is a system that is leaking. We find the leak or we tell you the coil is finished. We will not sell an annual top-up as a service, and on a system only a few years old a leak is worth pursuing under warranty rather than paying for twice.
05
Maintenance
Ductless equipment needs different attention from ducted, and most owners are never told what.
Once a year
- Indoor blower wheel and drain pan cleaned properly, not just wiped
- Condensate line and pump flushed and tested
- Outdoor coil cleaned and the clearances checked
- Charge checked against the manufacturer's figures
- Electrical connections checked and torqued
Every month, by you
- The two mesh filters behind the front panel of each indoor head. They lift out, they rinse under a tap, and they go back dry.
- That is genuinely the whole owner task, and it makes more difference than anything else on this page.
We show you on handover
Every commissioning visit ends with somebody being shown how to take the filters out, and a note of it left with the paperwork. If you bought the unit and never lived in it, leave that note for the tenant.
Not sure which of those you need?
Send a floor plan, or describe the building. Most of it can be settled before anybody drives out.