Heating & cooling
AC & HVAC repair in Palo Alto.
Heat pump, ductless, and furnace work across Palo Alto, including the Eichler homes most duct shops turn away.
Palo Alto holds one of the largest Eichler concentrations anywhere, with whole tracts of them in Greenmeadow and Fairmeadow on the 94306 side. Those houses were built with radiant heat in the slab and no ductwork at all, and by now most of the original slabs are dead or dying. The copper is buried in concrete, and nobody is going to chase a leak through a slab economically. The retrofit that respects the house is ductless: wall-mounted heads that heat and cool without touching the flat roof or the open ceilings.
The rest of the city is conventional. Old Palo Alto and Crescent Park remodels run ducted furnaces and AC, much of it installed during the 2000s remodel wave and now at the age where heat exchangers, inducer motors, and condensers start going. Midtown and University South apartments run compact equipment that fails in compact ways, and we service those too.
One thing separates Palo Alto from every neighbor: the city runs its own utility. Electricity comes from City of Palo Alto Utilities, not PG&E, and the city has pushed electrification hard, so heat pump incentives and permitting run through CPAU and the city's own programs. We confirm what is actually paying when we write your estimate. The diagnostic is $75, credited toward the repair, with a written itemized quote before work starts. EPA Section 608 Universal certified, CSLB #1136642.
Eichlers: skip the slab, keep the ceilings
The radiant slab was a good idea with a service life, and in most of these houses that life is over. We do not sell slab repairs that will not hold. The standard retrofit is a Mitsubishi or Daikin multi-zone heat pump with heads placed so the post-and-beam ceilings stay clean and the outdoor unit sits where it does not fight the architecture. I trained at the Daikin factory and have completed Mitsubishi Electric factory courses, which matters when a head throws a communication fault and the answer lives in the branch box, not the wall unit.
Eichler walls are thin and the glass is single-pane unless someone upgraded it, so we size for the actual envelope instead of quoting the smallest system in the brochure. See ductless service for the repair side of these systems.
The ducted side of town
For the remodeled stock in Old Palo Alto and Crescent Park we run standard furnace and AC repair: igniters, flame sensors, capacitors, contactors, slow refrigerant leaks. Equipment from the 2000s remodel wave is now 15 to 25 years old, so the repair-or-replace question comes up on most visits. We give you the honest version in writing: what the fix costs, what the unit is realistically worth after the fix, and what a heat pump replacement would run instead.
Electrification and the CPAU difference
Because CPAU is municipal, the rebate landscape in Palo Alto does not match PG&E territory next door, and advice copied from a Mountain View job can be flat wrong here. We check the current CPAU programs plus BayREN and manufacturer rebates at estimate time, and we handle the permit path the city requires. Our installs carry a 10 year parts and labor warranty.
Common questions, Palo Alto.
- My Eichler's radiant heat stopped working. What are my options?
Slab leaks in Eichler radiant systems are rarely worth chasing, since the copper is cast into the concrete. The proven retrofit is a ductless multi-zone heat pump, which adds cooling these houses never had and keeps the ceilings and roof untouched. We install Mitsubishi and Daikin and quote it in writing first.
- Does Palo Alto's city utility change my heat pump rebates?
Yes. Palo Alto runs on City of Palo Alto Utilities rather than PG&E, so the incentive programs are the city's own and they differ from neighboring towns. We confirm the current CPAU, BayREN, and manufacturer programs when we write your estimate, not from memory.
- How much does an HVAC service call cost in Palo Alto?
The diagnostic is $75, credited toward the repair when you book it with us. Every quote is written and itemized before work starts, so the number you approve is the number you pay.
Heating & cooling