Heating & cooling
AC & HVAC repair in Hillsborough.
Heating-first service for a fog-belt town of old boilers, big remodels, and houses that run more than one system.
Hillsborough is one ZIP, 94010, no commercial district, and some of the oldest estate stock on the Peninsula. The 1920s and 30s Tudors and Spanish revivals were built around boilers and radiators, and plenty still run that way. The mid-century houses and the remodel-era rebuilds run ducted systems, usually two or more per house. Both generations are producing service calls now, and they fail in completely different ways.
The climate here is fog off the coast range. Heating carries the load most of the year, cooling matters for a few warm stretches, and a lot of the older houses never had air conditioning at all. That mix is exactly where heat pumps earn their keep, one machine covering the long mild heating season with cooling included for the weeks it is wanted.
We are based in San Ramon and run Hillsborough on the Peninsula route. EPA Section 608 Universal certified, CSLB #1136642. The diagnostic is $75, credited toward the repair when you book it, and every quote is written and itemized first.
Boilers and radiators in the old estates
A 1920s Hillsborough Tudor with original radiators is not a teardown candidate and neither is its heating. Circulator pumps, zone valves, expansion tanks, air in the loops, failed aquastats: most boiler calls end in a repair, not a replacement. When a boiler truly is finished, a modern high-efficiency unit drops into the same hydronic system and the radiators keep doing what they have done for a century. We tell you in writing which situation you have before anything is ordered.
The remodels and their multi-zone systems
The rebuilt and heavily remodeled houses run ducted equipment, typically split into two or three systems across the floors. The common calls are zone dampers that stick, control boards that drop a zone, and furnaces from the 1990s and 2000s reaching heat-exchanger age. We test heat exchangers properly instead of condemning them on sight, because that call gets made wrong in both directions and either mistake is expensive. Replacements go through HVAC installation with written load calculations, not a like-for-like guess.
Cooling in the fog belt
Hillsborough summers do not call for oversized air conditioning, and oversizing is the standard mistake here. A system sized for a Sacramento summer short-cycles in a Hillsborough one and cools badly while doing it. For houses adding cooling for the first time, a properly sized heat pump usually wins: it replaces the aging furnace and handles the warm weeks in the same package. For the hydronic houses, ductless heads in the bedrooms cover cooling without touching the radiator system.
Common questions, Hillsborough.
- Should we keep the radiators in our older Hillsborough house or convert to ducts?
Keep them in most cases. Hydronic radiator heat is quiet and comfortable, and the failures are almost always in the boiler room, not the radiators or the piping. Converting to ducts means cutting chases through a house that was never designed for them. We repair the boiler plant, or replace just the boiler when it is finished, and the radiators stay.
- Can you add air conditioning to a Hillsborough house that never had it?
Yes. If the house has ducts, we confirm they can actually move the air before quoting anything, because many older duct runs cannot. If it runs on radiators, ductless mini-splits cool the rooms that need it without touching the heating system. Either way the equipment gets sized for this climate, which is milder than the catalogs assume.
- What does an HVAC service call cost in Hillsborough?
The diagnostic is $75 and it comes off the bill when you book the repair with us. Quotes are written and itemized before work begins. We are EPA Section 608 Universal certified and CSLB licensed under #1136642.
Heating & cooling