Repair
Diagnostic first, quote second. A flat fee to find the fault, credited against the work. On a rental we send the findings to whoever is paying, in writing, the same day.
Pomona · Claremont · La Verne · San Dimas · Ontario
The person who is cold is not always the person who pays.
About half of what we do is an ordinary house with the owner living in it. The other half is a rental, a duplex or a small building where the occupant reports the fault and somebody else decides what happens next. Those are two different jobs, and we quote them differently.
You live here
Your house, your decision, your comfort.
The straightforward case. We diagnose before we quote, we tell you when a repair is worth doing and when it is not, and you get both numbers when both are real options.
Nothing on this site about rentals applies to you. Skip to the services and we will see you at the survey.
You own it, somebody else lives in it
A different set of questions entirely.
Who reports the fault, who gives notice, who is there to let us in, what lasts five years rather than five months, and whether the same model across four units would save you money every year.
That is a page of its own, and it is the reason this business is worth calling rather than the nearest van.
Where the two diverge
The same fault, two different jobs.
Nothing here is about the machine. It is about who decides, who is inconvenienced, and over what period the money is being counted.
If you live here
You describe the fault yourself
You know which room, what time of day, and what changed. That is most of a diagnosis before anybody drives out, and it is why an owner-occupier call is usually quicker.
If you own it
The fault arrives second-hand
"The air conditioning is broken" can mean a tripped breaker, a filter nobody has changed in three years, or a failed compressor. We ask the tenant a short set of questions before the visit, with your permission, because the answer changes which van comes.
Cheapest now
Often the right answer
If a repair buys you five more years in a house you are staying in, take it. We will say so even when the replacement quote would have been ours.
Cheapest over five years
Usually a different answer
A repair that needs repeating twice more is three call-out fees, three days of a tenant being unhappy and three chances of a weekend failure. We price both and say which we would choose if the building were ours.
You are here
Access is simple
We agree a window and you open the door. If something takes longer than expected, you are standing there and we tell you.
Access is the hard part
Notice, a window, and somebody present
You give the tenant proper notice — that is your responsibility rather than ours. We confirm an arrival window instead of a vague morning, and we do not turn up unannounced at somebody's home even holding a key.
One system
Whatever suits the house
Sized and chosen for your building and how you live in it. No other consideration.
Several systems
Standardise where the units are similar
One model across a fourplex means one filter size, one set of spares, one page of instructions and a technician who already knows it on the second call. Free at the point of replacement, saves money every year afterwards.
What we do
Five services, for both kinds of customer.
Each one is written out in full on the services page, including what it does not cover.
Replacement
Air conditioners, furnaces and heat pumps, sized to the building rather than matched to whatever came out. Two numbers where both a repair and a replacement are real.
Wall & floor heaters
Still in a great many older Pomona houses and small buildings. There is no like-for-like modern swap, so this is always a conversation about what replaces it.
Rentals & multi-unit
Duplexes, fourplexes and small buildings. Standardised equipment, one written record per unit, scheduled service across a whole building in one visit.
Ductwork & maintenance
Sealing, insulating and rebuilding attic duct, adding returns, and annual service — which on a let property is the cheapest insurance against a July phone call.
What we don't do
No electrical panel upgrades, no roofing, no solar, no duct cleaning sold as a product — and no legal advice about what a landlord is required to provide.
The signature page
When the person who pays is not the person who is cold.
Everything a small landlord actually needs to know, written by the contractor rather than by a property-management blog.
What a tenant can usefully tell you before anybody drives out. Why the cheapest repair is rarely the cheapest over five years. Access and notice, and whose job each is. Standardising equipment across similar units. Filters, and the single arrangement that works. What happens at turnover. And the questions we will not answer, because they belong to your lawyer rather than to us.
- Five questions to ask a tenant before you call anybody
- Cheapest now versus cheapest over five years
- Notice and access — whose responsibility each part is
- Standardising across similar units, and when not to
- The filter problem, and the only arrangement that works
- Turnover: the twenty minutes between tenants that is worth an hour later
The housing here
Older, mixed, and rented more often than people assume.
Pomona and the streets around it carry a wide range of housing: 1920s bungalows and Spanish-era stock near the centre, post-war tracts further out, and a great deal of small multi-unit — duplexes, fourplexes, converted houses and low-rise apartment blocks — threaded through both.
A lot of it is let. That is not a comment about the city; it is the practical reason this business is organised the way it is. In a week we will be in a house somebody is retiring in and a fourplex owned by somebody two counties away, and treating those as the same job serves neither.
The older stock also brings a specific piece of equipment with it: wall and floor heaters, still in service in a great many of these buildings, with no like-for-like modern replacement available. That is a conversation rather than a swap, and we have it often.
How a job goes
Four steps, and step one differs depending on who you are.
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The call
If you live there, describe the fault. If you own it, tell us who is in the building and who can let us in — that decides the visit more than the fault does.
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Diagnose
A flat diagnostic fee, credited against the work. On a rental the findings go to whoever is paying, in writing, the same day.
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Two numbers
Where a repair and a replacement are both real, you get both — with the five-year view stated rather than implied.
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The work
An arrival window rather than a vague morning. Permits pulled. The unit left as we found it, and the tenant shown the filter if there is one.
Where we work
A tight radius, because short notice is the whole job.
Multi-unit and rental work is a lot of short visits arranged at short notice around somebody else's day. That only works close to home, so we stay in the east valley.
- Pomona
- Claremont
- La Verne
- San Dimas
- Glendora
- Covina
- West Covina
- Walnut
- Diamond Bar
- Montclair
- Ontario
- Upland
Outside that list, call anyway — if we cannot take it on we will usually know who can.
For owners with more than one unit
Say so on the first call. We will schedule several units in one visit where we can, keep one written record per unit so the next visit starts from what the last one found, and send insurance certificates up front rather than on request.
On emergency cover
We do not advertise 24-hour service. A small shop cannot staff it honestly. The phone is answered from seven, overnight messages are returned first thing, and during a heat run a unit with no cooling at all and somebody living in it goes to the front of the day — whoever owns it.
Common questions
Asked on nearly every visit.
I rent. Can I call you myself?
You can call us and we will listen, and it costs you nothing. What we cannot do is carry out work on somebody else's building without their authority. So the practical answer is: tell us what is happening, we will tell you what it sounds like, and then either you pass that on to your landlord or — with your permission — we contact them directly. Quite often a tenant who can describe the fault accurately gets it fixed faster than one who cannot.
Am I required to provide air conditioning in a rental?
Heating is a different matter from cooling. California requires a rental to have heating facilities in working order; cooling is generally not required by state law, though local rules vary and have been changing in some places. We are HVAC contractors rather than lawyers, so we will tell you what condition your equipment is actually in and leave the legal question to your counsel or your local housing department — and we will not guess at it to win a job.
How do you handle access when a tenant lives there?
The owner has to give the tenant proper notice before anybody comes in, and that is the owner's responsibility rather than ours. We work to whatever notice you have given, we confirm an arrival window rather than a vague morning, and we will not turn up unannounced at somebody's home even when we have a key. If the tenant is not there and we were told they would be, we leave and we say so.
Should I standardise the equipment across my units?
Where the units are similar, yes, and it is the single most useful thing a small landlord can do. One model across a fourplex means one set of filters, one set of common spare parts, one set of instructions for every tenant, and a technician who already knows the system on the second call. It costs nothing extra at the point of replacement and it saves money every year afterwards.
Which areas do you cover?
Pomona, Claremont, La Verne, San Dimas, Glendora, Covina, West Covina, Walnut, Diamond Bar, Montclair, Ontario and Upland. A tight radius, because multi-unit work is a lot of short visits at short notice and that only works close to home.
Tell us which of the two you are.
Living in it or letting it out. That one answer changes the questions we ask and the way the quote is written.