Bonded & insured
Contractor's bond, general liability and workers' compensation in force. Certificates issued on request before work starts.
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A shop that measures things
Most of what separates a good HVAC visit from a bad one is whether anyone put an instrument on the system before deciding what to sell you.
Who we are
Small, local, and deliberately limited
NovaMist works out of Tice Valley Boulevard. Walnut Creek, Alamo, Lafayette and Danville are inside fifteen minutes; the rest of what we cover is inside thirty. That limit is the point, not a shortcoming — a short radius is what makes an arrival window mean something.
It also means we keep seeing the same housing stock: the single-storey ranch houses off Rossmoor Parkway, the 1970s two-storeys under the ridge, the hillside places in Lafayette and Orinda where the ducting runs through a crawlspace nobody has looked at since it was built.
The person who quotes your job is the person who does it. There is no sales department, because there are not enough of us to have one.
How we work
Four things we will not bend on
- Measure before recommending
- Static pressure, temperature split, amp draws, airflow at the register. A recommendation with no measurement behind it is a guess with an invoice attached.
- A price before the work
- Scope and number in writing, approved by you. If something else appears once a unit is open, we stop and re-quote rather than continuing and explaining afterwards.
- No commission on equipment
- Nobody here earns more by selling you a new system. It is the only arrangement under which "this has a few years left, let's repair it" can be an honest answer.
- We show you the numbers
- Before and after, on paper. Especially on filtration and ductwork, where the whole argument is whether anything actually changed.
Credentials
The boring part that protects you
Ask any contractor for these before they touch your house. We would rather you did.
Refrigerant handling
EPA Section 608 certified technicians, proper recovery equipment, and refrigerant handled and recorded as the regulations require.
Permits & Title 24
We pull the permit on changeouts that need one, prepare the Title 24 documentation, schedule the inspection and hand over the closed permit.
Being straight about it
What we do not take on
Knowing what to decline is most of what keeps a small shop good at the rest.
- Large commercial rooftop work and refrigeration. Different equipment, different trade — we will point you at someone who does it.
- Jobs well outside central Contra Costa. If we cannot get back quickly when something needs attention, we should not have taken it.
- Installing equipment somebody else supplied. We warranty what we fit, which means we have to choose it.
- Putting a high-grade filter into a system that cannot breathe through it, because a customer asked for one. We will explain why and fix the real problem instead.
Still deciding who to call?
One visit, one written price, no pressure afterwards.