Buildings first. Houses too.
Brighton looks after heating, cooling and ventilation for the people who are responsible for a building — and for the people who live in one. Two different jobs, one set of instruments, and the same habit of writing down what was measured.
A hard freeze, in three stages
West Texas gets one or two of these a winter and they arrive with three or four days of warning. The page is built as a sequence — before, during, after — crossed with the kind of building you are responsible for, because a warehouse and a restaurant fail in different places.
The part most lists get wrong
After a freeze, look for water before you restart anything. The commonest expensive outcome we attend is not a dead heat pump — it is a system switched back on into a building that has a split line somewhere nobody has found yet. The page says so first, before it says anything about equipment.
Six things, set in order
Planned maintenance
Two visits a year per unit for commercial sites, one for most houses. Readings recorded against the unit, not against the building, so a machine that is drifting is visible before it stops.
Repair on packaged units
Rooftop packaged units are most of the commercial equipment in this town. Economisers, gas sections, belts and curbs — and an honest answer about which of them are worth the next repair.
Heat pumps and gas heat
Service, repair and replacement in houses. Combustion tested on gas appliances, defrost proved on heat pumps, and auxiliary heat checked to see whether it is running when it should not be.
Ductwork measured
Static pressure and leakage tested rather than looked at. In a town where most returns run through an attic, the attic is usually where the capacity went.
Extract and make-up air
Kitchen hoods, restrooms and process extract, with the make-up air that the extract needs. A building held at negative pressure pulls its own problems in through every door.
Freeze preparation
A written walk-round before the first hard night: what gets isolated, what gets drained, what stays running, and who does what. Booked in November, not in the week itself.
If the building is your responsibility
Retail units, restaurants, clinics, offices, storage and light industrial. A survey that records each unit and its condition, a maintenance schedule you can hand to whoever comes after you, and a call-out position that is written down rather than assumed.
If it is your house
No-cooling and no-heat calls checked cheapest first. Attic ductwork, the room that never keeps up, dust that is really a filtration problem, and a replacement conversation that starts with the house rather than with a model number.
Five things this website does not print
| Prices | A rooftop unit on a curb and a split system in an attic are not the same job. A figure here would be a guess, and it would be wrong in your favour about half the time. |
| A response time | We do not publish one, because in a freeze week nobody can honestly hold to it. What we will do is tell you where you are in the queue when you ring. |
| Savings percentages | The number depends on what you had before, what you set it to and what the winter does. Anybody printing one has picked the flattering case. |
| Reviews and ratings | There are none on this site. When there are real ones they will be somewhere you can check them, under their own names. |
Asked most often
What should I actually do before a hard freeze?
Change the filter, run the heat hard for an hour today, clear anything stacked against the outdoor unit, find the water shut-off in daylight and make sure it turns, and stop setting the thermostat back overnight. All of it is free, all of it is easier on the Tuesday than on the Friday, and the hour of running heat is the part that finds a problem while somebody can still get to you.
My outdoor unit is a solid block of ice. Can I pour hot water on it?
No. Switch to emergency or auxiliary heat and ring us. A heat pump ices as part of normal operation and clears itself, so ice that is not clearing means the defrost cycle is not working or the unit cannot breathe. Chipping at it damages the coil, and hot water refreezes and makes it worse. Running it iced is how a compressor fails.
The building will not warm up no matter what the units do. Why?
In a commercial unit the usual answer is pressure rather than heat. A kitchen extract or a restroom fan running with no make-up air holds the building at negative pressure, so freezing outside air is pulled in around every door and through the front entrance each time it opens. We measure it rather than guess, and the fix is sometimes a make-up air unit and sometimes just balancing the extract you already have.
What is an economiser and why does it matter in winter?
On a rooftop unit it is a damper arrangement that uses outside air directly for cooling when the weather allows, which in Abilene is a large part of the year. It matters in winter for the opposite reason: a damper stuck open pulls freezing air straight through the unit. It is also the part that seizes quietly, because the unit still cools and nobody notices. We open and prove them at every planned visit.
Do you publish a response time?
No, and we would ask you to be careful of anybody who does. In a freeze week nobody in this town can honestly hold to a published figure. What we will do is tell you where you are in the queue when you ring, and tell you if the honest answer is that somebody else can get there sooner.
Which areas do you cover?
Abilene, Tye, Impact, Potosi, Buffalo Gap, Merkel, Clyde and Tuscola.
Buffalo Gap Road, Abilene
4582 Buffalo Gap Rd, Abilene, TX 79606. We cover Abilene and the Big Country — Tye, Impact, Potosi, Buffalo Gap, Merkel, Clyde, Tuscola and the county between them.
Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 5pm. (325) 215-8267