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Post-war single storey, attic ducts, and in a great many cases the insulation the house was built with.
We look up before we look at the machine
On a comfort complaint — a hot room, a house that loses ground in the afternoon, bills that have climbed — the attic gets looked at first. How deep the insulation is, whether it is even, whether it has been walked on and flattened, whether the ducts are lying on it or buried in it, and how much of it is simply missing around the hatch and the light fittings.
Then the duct: leakage and static pressure, measured. Then, and only then, the equipment.
That order sounds obvious and it is very rarely followed, because the equipment is the thing we sell.
Six things
No cooling, no heat
Checked in order of cost. Capacitors, contactors, float switches, filters, thermostats and breakers before anything expensive is discussed.
Annual service
Once a year, with the readings recorded so next year’s visit has something to compare against rather than an opinion.
Duct testing and sealing
Measured, then sealed where the measurement says to. In a hot attic this is frequently worth more than any equipment change.
The hot room
A damper, a crushed flex run, a missing return, or a ceiling with nothing above it. We find out which before proposing anything.
Condensate
Primary drain, secondary pan and float switch, tested. With a coil above a ceiling this is the cheapest insurance in the house.
Replacement
Sized from the house you will have. If you are insulating this year, that goes in the calculation and usually makes the system smaller.
Worth hearing early
Bigger is not safer
An oversized system cools the thermostat quickly and stops, so it never runs long enough to take moisture out. In a coastal county that leaves a house cold and heavy, with a compressor starting and stopping all day.
Attic ducts are the quiet cost
A return-side leak in a 130-degree attic is pulling that air into the system every minute it runs. It makes no noise, it is invisible, and it looks exactly like a system that is too small.
A dusty house is usually a filter path
Not the grade — the path. If the cabinet does not seal round the filter, or the return draws attic air through a gap at the plenum, most of the air goes around whatever you fitted.
When we say do the attic first
It happens on roughly one comfort call in five. The house has thin or uneven insulation, the ducts are in that attic, and adding equipment would be buying capacity to fight a problem that can be reduced for less money by somebody else.
We will say it, put it in writing, and tell you what to ask an insulation contractor for. We will not quote that work ourselves, and we will not take a referral fee for sending it on. Then, when it is done, the load calculation is worth doing and the system you buy is usually smaller than the one you were about to.