The vintage homes of Southern California are often beautiful, styled in classic Spanish and Art Deco designs. If you live in one of these homes, you want to preserve as much of the beauty as possible…
…but having a central air conditioning system—that’d be great too. Unfortunately, these vintage homes were built before central ventilation was common in residential buildings. There isn’t much space to put in ductwork unless you are okay with major renovations that can harm the original integrity of the home. You can rely on window ACs, but those look ugly when put into the windows of a beautiful vintage home.
Is there a solution? We wouldn’t bring the topic up if we didn’t have one!
One of the odd troubles we face in Southern California when it comes to home heating is that it’s easy to let a heater stay around for far too long in a house. When people don’t rely too often on a system like a gas furnace, they often don’t consider when it’s old enough that it needs to be replaced.
We care about our customers. We not only want to provide the best service for them on every job, we want to make sure they feel safe having our experts in their home. This is why we are fully licensed and insured (100% insured for both Liability and Workers Compensation) and do full background checks and drug-testing on all our employees so they earn the Technician Seal of Safety.
Nobody wants a smelly appliance in their house. But a smelly air conditioner… that’s not something people expect to happen. But it does! You may notice odd smells wafting from the room vents in your house when you have your air conditioning system running. These smells can indicate simple, innocuous problems. Or they could indicate a need for 
If you are shopping for a new home or are planning to sell your current one, you may have heard about how important it is for the house to be “up to code” or “code compliant.” What does this actually mean, and how do you find out if the house meets the code? 
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the idea of a “home theater system” meant a nice television set in a room without too much light to distract from the screen. Anything more “theatrical” needed to have an expensive projection system and screen installed. Then along came stereo sound equipment. Then big screen TVs. Then surround-sound audio systems. Then flat-screen TVs. Then digital sound. Then HD TVs. Then 4K TVs. And who knows what else may be around the corner?
The electrical panel of your home, a.k.a. the circuit breaker panel, is the hub of your electrical system. It’s where the incoming electricity is routed to the different circuits. The breakers are designed to shut off circuits in case of a voltage overload. If you have an old circuit breaker panel, you should make sure you aren’t overdue for having it upgraded.
Los Angeles and most of Southern California don’t suffer from the same type of high humidity issues that you’ll find in other hot parts of the country, like Florida. But humidity can still be an issue in our homes, and it isn’t always the fault of the weather. Our homes produce a large amount of moisture that can make them stuffy and unpleasant. Air conditioning systems do have some dehumidifying abilities, but they aren’t designed specifically to handle this job (unless they have a dehumidifier integrated into them) and may even make the air too dry.
Southern California has gone through a bizarre and sometimes unfortunate hot-cold winter season this year. The heat has come from unfortunate wildfires in many areas of the state. The cold has been a nippier December than usual, and we can still anticipate more days ahead when heating systems will need to do their jobs. It’s true we don’t tax our heaters as much as homes do in Minnesota, but they still have to function to help us enjoy our lives to the fullest.
A bit of a chill goes through the air, and then a few days later, it’s warm again. That’s what life is like here in Southern California during the winters. In fact, it’s why most of us love it down here! But when you experience winters this mild, it makes it easy to forget that heating systems do have a part to play and it’s vital to keep a heating system in a home in the best shape.
