HVAC Repair & Installation Serving Richlandtown, PA

Many of the older homes in a village this age were built before central heating, so what we find in the basement is usually a later addition: a furnace or boiler put in during a renovation, with ducts or piping routed around the existing structure. How old that equipment is varies house to house, and 20 years is not unusual.

Oil and propane are common heating fuels in Upper Bucks wherever gas mains do not reach. Whether the main runs down your particular block is something we check before we talk conversion, rather than assume. If you are on oil, the usual trouble spots are a clogged nozzle, an old filter, sludge in the tank and soot on the heat exchanger.

Central air in a house this old is often retrofitted, so the ductwork may be smaller or more cramped than a modern system wants. Before replacing an AC or heat pump we look at duct size and sealing, not just the tonnage on the old nameplate.

On an oil furnace call in an older house, the first checks are the nozzle, the filter, the tank and the draft. A furnace that short-cycles for weeks before it quits is usually telling you something specific, and a clogged nozzle or a dirty filter is the most common cause.

When we look at an AC that never seems to dry the house out, we check sizing against the home itself instead of the unit it replaced. Equipment that is too large for an older house cools quickly and shuts off before it removes humidity, which people often read as a bad unit.

For retrofitted ducts we measure static pressure and check the seals at joints and boots. If the ducts cannot move the air a new system needs, we say so before quoting, because the equipment cannot make up for ducts that are too small.