One contractor, and an honest map of where that stops.
Heating, cooling and ventilation for working buildings and houses across Carrollton and the north DFW corridor. If you have several sites we will tell you plainly which ones we can cover properly and which ones you should give to somebody local to them. That answer is worth more to you than a promise we could not keep.
Three things before anybody quotes anything
Find it and name it
Every unit located, rating plates photographed, model and serial numbers recorded. On a building that has changed tenants, a third of what is on the roof is frequently not connected to anything.
Measure it
Airflow and static pressure, refrigerant charge against the manufacturer’s target, economiser operation, filter condition and pressure drop, belt and bearing condition, condensate, and combustion on gas heat.
Say what it is worth
What a repair costs, what a replacement costs, and which of the two the measurements actually support. Both numbers, every time, so you are choosing rather than agreeing.
You have four sites and four different contractors
Five shapes an estate can take, crossed with the four ways it is being handled now. What to standardise and what not to, where one contractor genuinely helps and where it does not, what a lease changes — and what it means when a facilities management company sits between you and whoever turns up.
Working buildings
Distribution and light industrial along the Hebron and Josey corridors, offices and medical suites, restaurants and retail on Belt Line and Trinity Mills, and the small flex units that make up a great deal of this city’s working stock. Most of it is rooftop plant, most of it has outlived one tenant, and most of it has no drawing of what serves what.
Houses
Long uniform tracts north of Trinity Mills with the ducts in attics that get genuinely dangerous to work in by midday, older stock around downtown Carrollton, and two-storey houses where the upstairs is four or five degrees warmer every afternoon from May.
The work, plainly
- Written plant survey
Every unit found, identified, measured and mapped to what it serves, with abandoned plant marked as dead.
- Planned maintenance
Scheduled visits, the same readings each time, written specifically enough that a lease obligation can be shown to have been met.
- Repair, costed against the alternative
What it is, what it costs, and what the replacement would cost beside it. You get both figures.
- Rooftop and split system replacement
Sized from the load the building carries now, with the curb, the opening and the crane established before anything is ordered.
- Records that travel
One folder per site in the same format, so a new manager or a new contractor can pick it up without starting again.
- Residential systems
Load calculations, attic duct sealing and insulation, zoning, and gas appliance safety checks on every first visit.
- Freeze preparation
Heat strips, condensate protection, outdoor equipment and anything that has to keep running when the grid is under strain. Checked before the season, not during it.
- An honest coverage map
Which of your sites we can serve properly and which ones you should give to somebody closer. Written down before you sign anything.
What we will not do
| We will not | Why |
|---|---|
| Claim coverage we do not have | We are one contractor in Carrollton. We can cover the north DFW corridor properly. Beyond that we will tell you so and help you find somebody local, because a site we reach in ninety minutes is a site that gets looked at less often. |
| Promise the same response time everywhere | It depends on the day, the traffic and what else has gone wrong. We will tell you when we can be there. A published figure is marketing. |
| Quote a repair without quoting the alternative | Where a repair is a poor investment we will say so and show you the replacement figure beside it. |
| Condemn a heat exchanger without showing you | It is a real reason to shut a furnace down and the most abused finding in this trade. You get the camera image or the combustion reading, and you are welcome to a second opinion. |
| Recommend replacement on age alone | Age changes the arithmetic on a repair. It is not a fault. |
| Go around a facilities management company | Where an FM firm holds the contract, they are our client and you are theirs. We will say so plainly rather than quietly take instructions from both. |
| Publish reviews, ratings or a founding date | There are none on this site because we are not going to invent any. |
Asked often enough to write down
We have sites across the metroplex. Can you cover all of them?
Probably not all of them, and we would rather say that now. We are one contractor in Carrollton and we can serve the north DFW corridor properly. A site we reach in ninety minutes is a site that quietly gets visited less often — by us or by anybody — and you would find that out eventually. Send us the list with the towns and the first thing you will get back is which ones we can cover and which ones you should give to somebody local to them, in writing, before you sign anything.
Is one contractor for every site better than four local ones?
It depends on what you want from it. One contractor is almost always better for records — one format, one history, one person who can compare site to site and tell you which building is quietly expensive. It is better for price only where the sites are genuinely similar. And it is worse for response the moment a site is far enough away. The arrangement that usually works is one contractor for the cluster and somebody local for the outliers, with the records kept in one place.
What is your response time?
We do not publish one, because nobody can promise one honestly. It depends on the day, the traffic and what else has gone wrong that morning. What we will do is tell you on the telephone when we can actually be there, and if that is not soon enough we will say so rather than let you wait. A published figure is marketing rather than a commitment.
An FM company manages our buildings. Can we deal with you directly?
That is a conversation to have with them first rather than with us. Where a facilities management company holds the contract, they are our client and you are theirs — we are instructed by them, we report to them and we are paid by them. We will not quietly take instructions from you on a site they hold, or send you a version of a report we have not sent them. What we would suggest asking them for is the contractor’s own reports rather than a summary, and an asset list with model and serial numbers. Both are yours to ask for.
What should we do about the freeze?
Have it looked at in October rather than in January. A Texas freeze is not a cold-climate problem, it is a short severe one on equipment that was specified for heat, and the items that matter are specific: auxiliary heat on a heat pump actually working, condensate routes that will not freeze and back up, outdoor pipework, and anything that has to keep running when the grid is under strain. That autumn visit is the cheapest one we do and it is the one people skip.
Our upstairs is always hotter. Do we need a bigger system?
Almost never, and it is worth knowing before anybody prices one. One system serving both floors is doing two different jobs, because the upstairs gains heat through the roof all afternoon while the downstairs does not. We measure the floors separately at the hour the complaint happens rather than in the morning. The answer is sometimes a damper and a rebalance, frequently duct sealing in an attic that is far hotter than the outside air, and occasionally a second system.
Which areas do you cover?
Carrollton, Lewisville, Farmers Branch, Addison, Coppell, Plano, The Colony and Irving.
75010 W Hebron Pkwy
Carrollton, TX 75010. Monday to Friday, 7am to 4.30pm.
We cover Carrollton, Lewisville, Farmers Branch, Addison, Coppell, Plano, The Colony and Irving.