HVAC Repair in Palo Alto
Same-Day Service, Flat Pricing

HVAC Repair and Installation in Palo Alto

Palo Alto is an unusual HVAC town. A large share of the housing stock was never built to take ducts at all, and the city has pushed electrification harder than almost anywhere else in the Bay Area. Both facts change what the right system actually is.

United HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical works across Old Palo Alto, Professorville, Crescent Park, Community Center, Midtown, College Terrace, Barron Park, Greenmeadow, Green Gables and the Palo Alto Hills. Every job carries California contractor license #1061226 and $2 million in liability insurance, and every technician is background-checked.

The Palo Alto Problem: Homes That Cannot Take Ducts

• Eichlers. Palo Alto has some of the largest Eichler tracts anywhere — Greenmeadow, Green Gables, Royal Manor. Flat roof, no attic, no crawl space worth using, and original radiant heating cast into the slab. When that radiant loop finally fails there is nowhere to run ductwork, which is why ductless mini-splits are the standard answer here. Done properly, the heads are placed to keep the clean lines these houses are known for.
• Pre-war homes in Professorville and Old Palo Alto. Built from the 1890s to the 1920s, often with hydronic or converted gravity heating and no ductwork at all. Retrofitting ducts into a house like this means losing closet space and ceiling height; a multi-zone heat pump usually costs less and works better.
• Single-pane glass and low insulation. The mid-century tracts were built with vast expanses of single glazing. Any system sized from square footage alone will be wrong — these houses lose and gain heat far faster than the floor area suggests, and an oversized unit short-cycles and never dehumidifies.
• Original 1950s and 60s equipment still limping along. We still find working furnaces older than the homeowner. They are usually running at a fraction of modern efficiency and are worth replacing on economics alone, before they fail in January.

Electrification and CPAU Rebates

Palo Alto runs its own utility — City of Palo Alto Utilities — rather than buying from PG&E, and it has been more aggressive than most cities in moving homes off gas. In practice that means heat-pump conversions here are often better supported than elsewhere in the South Bay, and it is worth checking current CPAU programmes before replacing a gas furnace like for like. We will tell you what a heat pump would cost alongside the straight replacement so you can compare the two honestly rather than being pushed at one.

What We Handle

• Emergency heating and cooling failures — 24/7, nights and weekends included.
• Air conditioning repair, replacement and installation.
• Furnace repair and replacement — including ignition, heat exchanger and control-board faults.
• Heat pumps — full changeovers and dual-fuel setups.
• Ductless mini-splits — single and multi-zone, the usual solution for Eichlers and pre-war homes.
• Radiant floor heating — diagnostics and alternatives when an original Eichler slab loop has failed.
• Ductwork inspection, sealing and replacement where ducts do exist.
• Seasonal maintenance — the thing that actually prevents the January and July emergency calls.

Upfront Pricing, No Trip Charge

You get a flat written price before anything is touched, not an hourly meter. Estimates are free, there is no trip charge in Palo Alto, and the number on the quote is the number you pay. On replacements we size the system by a proper load calculation rather than by floor area — in a single-glazed Eichler that difference is the whole job.

No heat, or no cooling, today?

Call (408) 539-6936 and you will reach someone who can tell you when a technician can be at the door.