Heating and Air Conditioning
Comfort at any elevation.
Systems sized to your winter design temperature, not a county average. We test the duct system before quoting equipment and document the commissioning readings.
Truckee / Tahoe
Heat pumps chosen on low-ambient capacity, not the 47°F rating, so backup heat stays backup.
Truckee →Nevada County
Home base. Gold-Rush housing stock to new ridge construction — we test airflow before recommending equipment.
Grass Valley →
Valley floor · 249–1,227 ft
Cooling load first.
Down here the classic mistake is oversizing. A system that satisfies the thermostat fast, shuts off, and never runs long enough to even out the house — you get swings, noise and a short equipment life. We size to a load calculation for the address, then verify the duct system can actually carry the airflow.
Right-sized replacement → Foothill belt · 1,450–2,600 ft
Two seasons, one system.
A real heating season, a real cooling season, and smoke in between. Cold-climate heat pumps earn their keep here — and filtration stops being an accessory. Filter depth gets matched to measured static pressure, because a high-MERV filter the system cannot pull air through makes comfort worse, not better.
Lake of the Pines Penn Valley Rough and Ready Grass Valley Colfax Nevada City Alta Sierra
Smoke-season filtration →
Snow line · 5,817–6,250 ft
Judged on the coldest night.
Up here a heat pump is chosen on what it delivers at low ambient, not its rating at 47°F, so backup heat stays backup. Elevated mounting, clearance for snow shed, drainage away from the coil and dual-fuel changeover are planned on the drawing, not improvised on the driveway.
Truckee Tahoe City Kings Beach
Cold-climate heat pumps →Twelve towns, 6,001 feet of difference. Tell us which one and we design to that number.
Find your townPick the closest description. Each one takes you to the right page — and if you would rather just talk to a technician, the number is on every one of them.
None of these? Call (530) 212-0057 and describe it — a technician reads every request.
Same data plate, same box, same price on the equipment. Everything that decides whether it performs happens after the box leaves the truck. Drag the handle.
Same data plate. Not the same system.
The same sequence whether it is a no-heat call in February or a whole-system replacement in July. It is also the reason we rarely go back to fix the same thing twice.
You tell us what the system is doing and when it started. Most diagnoses begin with a good description of the symptom, and it saves you money if we arrive knowing what to expect.
Not just the part that failed. Combustion, airflow, static pressure, refrigerant charge, controls and the duct path — because the component that broke is often not the reason it broke.
Written findings with the repair-versus-replace numbers, what each option buys you, and what we would do in your position. No pressure, no same-day-only pricing, no scare tactics.
On installs we verify airflow, static pressure, temperature split and charge, then leave you the readings. That record is what protects your manufacturer warranty and proves the system delivers what you paid for.
Residential and commercial, forced air and hydronic. Every one of these is work we do ourselves — not subcontracted out.
Smoke season
Filtration is mechanical design, not an accessory.
Smoke can sit in these canyons for weeks. A high-MERV filter your system cannot pull air through makes comfort worse, not better — so filter depth gets matched to measured static pressure, not to whatever the box claims.
Indoor air quality → Snow season
Sized for the coldest night, not the average one.
At Kings Beach — 6,250 feet — a heat pump has to be judged on its capacity at low ambient, not its rated output at 47°F. Mounting, snow shed clearance and drainage get planned, not improvised.
Cold-climate heat pumps →Foothill Comfort Club
Members get scheduled precision tune-ups, priority when the schedule is full, and a documented service history that keeps manufacturer warranties intact — for less than most people spend on one emergency call.
One system, and you want it maintained properly.
$169 / year or $14.95 / month
Heating and cooling both matter, and you would rather not think about it.
$279 / year or $24.95 / month
Everything in Essential, plus
Multiple systems, a hydronic system, or a home you cannot afford to have go down.
$389 / year or $34.95 / month
Everything in Preferred, plus
Full tier detail, the fine print and what is included at every visit: Foothill Comfort Club →
Straight answers
The four we hear every week, answered the way we would answer on your porch. No hedging, no upsell.
Cold-climate models do, and that distinction is the whole answer. Inverter-driven cold-climate heat pumps are engineered to hold usable heating capacity well below freezing, which covers the large majority of hours in a foothill winter. What gives heat pumps a bad reputation here is an undersized or non-cold-climate unit that runs out of capacity early and falls back on expensive electric backup heat. At the highest elevations we serve — Truckee, Tahoe City, Kings Beach — we will often recommend a dual-fuel configuration instead, pairing a heat pump for the long shoulder seasons with a gas furnace for the coldest nights.
A dual-fuel system pairs a heat pump with a gas furnace and automatically switches between them based on outdoor temperature. The heat pump handles mild and moderate conditions efficiently; below a set changeover point the furnace takes over, because that is where it becomes the cheaper and stronger heat source. For homes that already have gas or propane service, this is frequently the most economical and most resilient setup at elevation.
It comes down to four factors: the age of the equipment, the cost of the repair relative to replacement, whether the failure is a wear item or a core component, and how the system has performed overall. A capacitor on an eight-year-old system is a repair. A cracked heat exchanger or a failed compressor on a system past fifteen years is usually a replacement conversation. We give you both numbers and the reasoning, and we are entirely comfortable telling you to keep a system that has life left in it.
With a load calculation, not a rule of thumb. We measure the home and account for insulation, window area and orientation, air leakage and the duct system, using the winter design temperature that applies at your elevation — which is meaningfully colder in Alta Sierra or Truckee than in Rocklin. Oversizing is the most common and most expensive HVAC mistake in the foothills: an oversized system satisfies the thermostat quickly, shuts off, and never runs long enough to even out temperatures, so you get hot-and-cold swings, noisy cycling and shortened equipment life.
Request service
Tell us what the system is doing and where you are. We serve Nevada County and the Truckee/Tahoe area, residential and commercial, and we will follow up to confirm scheduling.
A technician reviews every request. No call centre.
