Find Top-Rated Madison HVAC Contractors

No one can tell you what another contractor will charge. There is no one set price for heating and air-conditioning equipment installation. One of the major factors that affect your price is its size. No one can tell you what size equipment you’ll need without doing a load analysis on the home. That calculation essentially determines the insulation value of the home, i.e... What is the heat gain of the home, what are some other prevailing factors like room equipment, solar gain, or natural shading? You can compare prices between contractors to gauge what your cost would be between contractors, but this is a little tricky to do. Let me explain a little more. Let's say you get an installation quote of $5050.00 from contractor “A” who employs three technicians and operates two trucks. He also runs his operation from home. Contractor “B” charges $6200.00 to do the same job but has 10 employees and 5 trucks. He works out of a rental unit and offers his people a little bit better of a benefit package to recruit highly motivated workers. Everything else being equal (equipment size, SEER rating, furnace efficiency, brand name and additional material—other things that affect the price), is either one of these contractors defrauding you? No, their overhead is different. All these things play into a company’s labor rate. Just be aware of your expectations when it comes to performing any kind work in your home. If you want to pay an extremely low-inexpensive price below the average installation cost in your area then you are highly likely to get the quality of work that comes with that cost. Remember cheaper is not better!

The only thing of importance, is the hvac professional you choose to use. Alot of manufacturer's pieces are built relatively the same, and will last about the same amount of time. The thing that matters most is what you can not compare between companies, and that is the installation. Purchasing a system is not like purchasing a car, where no matter where you buy it, they are all the same. Each installation is different, and usually what you are paying for is the level of expertise, and quality of the installation, the company who will actual give you the warranty, and the comfort that you will receive. Manufacturers warranties disappear every day. They always have a loophole where they can get out of paying, but your local dealer wants to keep you happy for future work, and to protect his reputation in the communiy. Look up 4 year old Nordyne and Goodman warranty problems. Choose the HVAC professional first. It will cost you the least in the long run. I have had to totally redo plenty of installations that were just performed because of an uncomfortable customer, and a system that keeps breaking down. The equipment is only as good as it's installation, and over 70% are not installed correctly.

Yes Jupiter. It depends on the severity of the situation, is the mold encapsulated in the insulation. If yes, than replace [insulation] it with new. Is it on the casing of the heater? If yes, clean it with a mold neutralizing metal cleaner. It's not a matter of finding something or someone to clean or address the existing mold. It's a matter of finding a contractor to rectify what is causing the mold grow. It's coming from excessive moisture in the air-handler unit. I can say with 100% surety you’re dealing with poor airflow and/or incorrect equipment sizing! Either issue will cause excessive icing of the evaporator coil, which leads to excessive condensate water in the system. The condensate will eventually overflow the drain pan leaving stagnant water in the air-handler housing, which leads to mold growth. I would not let any contractor do any kind of temporary repair, add any device like a UV light or air-cleaning product until the aforementioned is corrected. I talk a lot about this in my videos and on my website. It is the result of improper system design from unqualified contractors. There is a reason why some guys cost more than others, and this is one reason why!

I'd rate them equal,or close,as with several other brands. I'd be more concerned about the difference in installation and service down the road. Difficult to determine the difference ,but asking for detailed info about their installation,may convince you to choose one over the other.

The Dept. of Energy states that poor installations can cause a 30% efficiency loss! Plus with Gas their are saftey issues,venting properly etc.,and of couse the need for a "low Level" Carbon Monoxide Alarm.

I think maybe you are confusing SEER, which is an efficiency-related rating (higher SEER means more effective use of the electric power used to compress the gas), and TONS rating, which is a measure of the total cooling power of the system. (Tons used to mean how many tons per hour of ice was used in evaporative cooling building systems - a Refrigeration or Cooling Ton equals 12,000 Btu/Hour of energy exchange. A BTU, which is another antique measure but still used, is the energy needed to change the temperature of a pound of water one degree fahrenheit. Unfortunately, because of varying humidity and evaporation, this is not readily related to house air heating or cooling without a lot of assumptions and some computations. Relating this to today's world - the Manuals BayAreaAc referred to account for all these energy conversions and determine an estimated cooling (or heating) requirement for your specific house. The type of construction, solar exposure, general climatic conditions such as average temperatures, humidity, and hottest and coldest normal ambient temperatures and desired inside temperture are all taken into account in the more sophisticated versions of the analysis, so there is no "standard", though a rough old rule of thumb was about 1 ton of cooling per 500SF of house. Obviously, this was a WAG only because it did not account for insulation, type of roofing, whether you live in Alaska or Miami, etc. The ACCA manuals do a very simplified form of evaluation to arrive at a "design", which generally will be adequate. OF course, highly precise calculations are not really needed because A/C units generally come in even ton ratings - so if you are at say 2.6 ton requirement you will be getting a 3-ton unit anyway. SEER ratings are not a direct measure of efficiency, but the relative difference between ratings gives you good idea of the unit's relative efficency in using electricity - so a 16 SEER should be about 19% more efficient (so roughly comparable lower electricity bill) than a comparably sized 13 SEER unit. 13 SEER is the lowest efficiency currently allowed to be built for general use, 19 SEER is about the highest efficiency made by pretty much all manufacturers, and about 25 SEER is the highest rated though very pricey shelf-item units, though special construction custom units can reach about 30 SEER. Note however, like any government sponsored rating, much of it is hooey when you get down to it - for instance, SEER ratings are figured based on 80 degree inside air temp and 82 degrees outside, when that is far from the normal case of mid to low seventies inside and high eighties or above outdoors. This makes the absolute SEER rating meaningless, but relative numbers still have meaning in comparing units. Note these efficiency ratings are for conventional air conditoners and heat pumps working in ambient air conditions. Ground sourced Geothermal or lake/river exchange cooling units, though initially more expensive in most cases, can greatly exceed the air-exchange unit efficiencies because they are exchanging heat with cold natural water rather than with a high-temperature outside air, and instead of continually compressing a gas are just circulating cold water. I worked on one geothermal cooling project which had almost infinite efficiency, which of course makes no sense - but the only power was for sensors and a control valve as the water flow was single-pass under gravity flow, so no power was used to circulate the water.

YOU.
You bought the home after an inspection that told you there were issues?
Every state has different laws regarding home purchases, contact your real estate agent to find out what remedies may apply.
THIS IS EXACTLY why you hire QUALIFIED and LICENSED contractors.

Doug
AirTekHP
CSLB# 824188