Alternative HVAC Solutions

An excellent business. Have always been impressed by the depth of knowledge and expertise. A series of recommendations for anyone looking to install a similar system: - Mitsubishi is the gold standard. - 14-20 SEER is the energy efficiency band you want to shoot for as that is the most reliable. Anything in the high 20s or 30s I have read is more experimental and prone to failure. - They are hard to come by now but spend the extra money for mini split "head" Wi-Fi adapters. Being able to control everything on your phone is excellent. - It is very cheap to spend a little extra and have a mini split both heat and cool. At the time we installed the main compressor, it was $2,000 more to get the unit that could do both. - If you are retrofitting an existing house, or are considering an ADU (or 2), consider first the maximum number of heads and BTUs you would need 5 years from now. We installed the 60,000 BTU compressor with a branch box, pictured in photo 3 of the review, with only two mi

We contacted Alternative HVAC in San Carlos based on positive reviews. On the appointment date, we received a text message from Ricardo, the tech, that he was on his way. He arrived on time, in a nice new van and was very professional and pleasant. All seemed great. Ricardo checked our thermostat setting and discussed the problem we were having with my husband - our furnace was blowing cold air. Ricardo went under the house and ran through his diagnostics. When he came out, he said that he could not find an electrical problem as he had no error codes on his diagnostic unit. He suggested that we remove the filter inside the house in the cold air return to minimize back flow pressure, so we followed his advice. We even bought a new thermostat, even though the old one was only 1 year old - we figured it must be something other than the furnace. But, nothing changed. So, we called another company and within a short period of time, their tech found the simple problem - some residu

Alternative HVAC should have a 5 out of 5 stars!!! Seriously, Alternative HVAC saved me over $12K. After our air conditioning unit was not working and all thermostats in our home were toast, I had called Service Champions since they appeared to be the highest rating on yelp and Google. You can't always trust these ratings but please believe you can trust this one... To make a long story short, a technician from Service Champions came out, spent about 5 hours and over $440 dollars later our system was still not fixed. I was told that we needed to have our entire system rewired and the reason the system wasn't working was due to the wires crossing. He said to fix this it would cost over $4K. The tech recommended that we consider purchasing a new unit given the cost. I agreed to speak with someone from their company about a new unit and have them double check our system. Today, they had another technician come out to check our unit and talk to me about purchasing a new unit. He lo