What do contractors do without thinking that you refuse to do?

Wow, where do I start. There are so many things. A lot of contractors will use used components and used equipment on a job a customer is paying full price for. They will undersize the ductwork. They will undersize the wire, or use incorrect wiring that does not follow proper code. They will undersize the equipment, or oversize the equipment. The list goes on, and most of it happens in places a homeowner will never look.

Here is the short version of our rule. We refuse to cut corners. We refuse to take the easy way out. We refuse to do anything subpar. That sounds simple, but in this trade it is rare, and it costs us money to hold that line. We hold it anyway.

The corners we will not cut

• No used components or used equipment. You are paying for new, you get new.
• No undersized ductwork. Undersized duct chokes the whole system and makes it loud and inefficient.
• No undersized or incorrect wire. The electrical has to be sized to the equipment and done to code, every time.
• No oversized or undersized equipment. We size to the home with a load calculation, not to whatever is easiest to grab off the shelf.

What does Wahl always do instead?

It is one thing to say what we will not do. Here is what we always do, on every job, whether or not anyone is checking.

Our teams always do a triple evacuation on refrigerant systems. That is not standard practice for a lot of companies, and it is one of the clearest tells of whether a job was done right. We make the team shoot a video of the vacuum rise test so we can confirm the refrigerant side is actually sealed before we charge it. We also change the vacuum pump oil every single time. I went through the expense of investing in better, more expensive vacuum pumps to make that easier on the team, but it still has to get done on every job. Most other contractors would roll their eyes at all of that. We think it is the difference between a system that lasts and one that does not.

We use the best materials, not the cheapest

We use the best brazing rods, the best pads, the best copper line sets, the best equipment, the best thermostats, and the best ductwork. We do amazing custom ductwork, sized and built for your home instead of forced to fit. We are obsessive compulsive about every part of it. None of this shows up in a flashy way, but it shows up in a system that runs quietly, efficiently, and for years.

Why does this matter to a homeowner?

Because almost everything I just described is invisible the day the job is finished. A used part looks like a new part for about a year. Undersized ductwork looks fine until your second floor never cools. Skipping the triple evacuation looks fine until moisture in the lines eats the compressor early. By the time the corner-cutting shows up, the contractor is long gone.

That is the whole reason we do it this way. We want our customers to have the best product possible, and we want it to still be the best product five and ten years from now. If you want the deeper walk-through of how all of this comes together on an install, we wrote that up too. And if you want to know who you are dealing with, here is our story.