On this island, everything you install is ten feet from somebody else
Sawyer works on heating, cooling and ventilation across Alameda and the inner East Bay. There is no association here to referee anything — just narrow lots, shared walls and people who have lived next door to each other for twenty years. That decides more about a job than the equipment does.
Neighbours
Five kinds of job crossed with four distances. Where a unit can go without becoming somebody else’s problem, what to do when it is already theirs, and the difference between noise you can hear and noise you can feel.
There is no committee here
In most of the places we could be working there is an association, a form and somebody whose job it is to decide. On this island there is a fence, a four-foot gap and a person on the other side of it who did not ask to be consulted.
That is not a worse system. It is a different one, and it means the conversation happens before the work rather than after the objection.
Heard, or felt
Airborne noise and structure-borne vibration are different problems with different answers. Noise you can hear is about placement, distance and screening. Vibration carried into a shared wall is about mounts and fixings, and it is the one people find hardest to live with. Confusing them wastes money on the wrong fix.
Six things
Repair
No heat and no cooling, checked in order of cost, with the reading that proves the answer shown to you rather than described.
Placement
Where a unit can sit given the gap, the windows either side, the service access and the neighbour. Decided with a tape measure before anything is ordered.
Ductless
A great many houses here have no route for ductwork. Mini-splits sized per room, with line-set runs routed where nobody has to look at them.
Wall and floor furnaces
Still the heating in a lot of this housing stock. Serviced honestly, and replaced when they have genuinely reached the end rather than when it suits us.
Isolation and screening
Mounts, pads and screens specified for the actual problem — which is sometimes vibration and sometimes sound, and is rarely both.
Premises
Shops, cafes, offices and light industrial along Park and Webster and out at the old base. Split systems, rooftop units, extract and planned maintenance.
Houses
Victorian and Edwardian near the centre, post-war further out, most of it on narrow lots with no ductwork and a wall furnace. Cooling is a newer requirement here than in most of the Bay Area, and it has to be fitted into buildings that were not expecting it.
Premises
Small retail, cafes, offices and light industrial, much of it in older buildings with a flat above or a neighbour through the wall. The same island arithmetic applies, with the addition of hours and deliveries.
Six things this website does not print
| Decibel promises | We will quote the manufacturer’s published sound rating and say where it came from. We will not tell you how loud it will be at your neighbour’s window, because that depends on the buildings, the surfaces and the hour. |
| What your city allows | Noise limits and setbacks are the city’s to state and they differ. We will give you the figures a planner or a neighbour will ask for. We will not interpret an ordinance for you. |
| Prices | On narrow lots the job is defined by access and placement, and both differ house by house. |
| A response time | We do not publish one. We will tell you where you are in the queue when you ring. |
| Reviews and ratings | There are none on this site. When there are real ones they will be somewhere you can check them. |
Asked most often
The neighbour says our unit is too loud. What do we do first?
Ask them which room they notice it in and at what time. A sound heard outdoors in the evening is airborne noise and points at placement and screening. A hum felt in a bedroom at night, through a wall, is vibration and points at the mounts. They are different problems with different fixes, and the question takes thirty seconds. Then check whether anything has loosened — we have resolved months-old complaints with a spanner.
Will you give us a decibel figure for the neighbour’s window?
No. We will quote the manufacturer’s published sound rating and tell you where it came from. What it actually sounds like at a particular window depends on the buildings, the hard surfaces between them, the distance and the hour. Anybody giving you a confident number for that has not measured it either, and in a dispute an honest position is worth more than a convenient one.
Our house has no ductwork. Can you put in a ducted system?
Usually we would advise against it, and that is the honest answer rather than a limitation. Houses of this age on this island have no attic worth the name and no crawlspace route that does not go somewhere awkward, so a ducted system means losing a cupboard in every room and dropping a ceiling. A ductless system sized per room costs less, works better in a building with this much variation, and does not damage the house.
Can you look at our neighbour’s unit for us?
Not without their knowledge or consent, and we will not write a report intended to be used against them. We work on this island and so do they. What is usually true is that these situations are a mounting problem rather than a bad machine and are cheap to fix, and that the owner often has no idea there is a problem because in their house it is at the far end of the building. If they ask us to look, we are glad to — as their job, not yours.
Does the salt air here damage equipment?
A little, and less than people expect. This is estuary rather than open ocean: equipment here corrodes faster than inland and considerably slower than on an exposed coast. It changes the maintenance interval slightly and it is not a reason to buy an expensive protection package. We will tell you where your particular address sits rather than sell you the coastal answer by default.
Which areas do you cover?
Alameda, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, San Leandro, Piedmont, Albany and Kensington.
Otis Drive, Alameda
2350 Otis Dr, Alameda, CA 94501. We cover Alameda, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, San Leandro, Piedmont, Albany and Kensington.
Monday to Friday, 8am to 4pm. (341) 214-5670