Some houses do not suit a system out of a catalogue. Solid brick with no roof cavity, a split level that was added in the seventies, raked ceilings, a heritage frontage you cannot touch, or a property with a main house and two other buildings. If you have been told your place is too hard, or you have had quotes that clearly did not understand the house, this is the part of the job we are best at.
The harder it is, the more interested we are. Give us the short version.
The Macedon Ranges has a housing stock most installers are not set up for. Goldfields cottages, weatherboard farmhouses, grand old places on Mount Macedon, mud brick, rammed earth, and a lot of beautiful architect-designed homes built on difficult blocks. Very few of them look like the standard suburban house that heating systems are designed around.
What usually happens is an installer prices the job the only way they know how, finds the house does not allow it, and tells the owner it is not possible or quotes a number designed to make them go away. The house is not the problem. The approach is.
We take these jobs on because they are the interesting ones. Working out how to get conditioned air into a 130 year old house without touching the cornices, or how to heat a place with a double-height void that has never felt right, is a better day than another straight changeover.
If your home is on this list, you are exactly the sort of job we want.
Solid brick, stone, lath and plaster, ornate ceilings and no roof cavity worth using. The work has to go around what makes the house worth keeping, not through it.
Flat roofs, cathedral ceilings, or a cavity you physically cannot work in. Usually solved from underneath or outside rather than abandoned.
Houses that grew over decades, where each part behaves differently. These need a zoning strategy, not one system pointed at the whole place.
Heat behaves completely differently in a double-height space. Outlet placement and sizing matter far more here, and getting it wrong is why some rooms never feel right.
Main house, studio, converted barn, guest wing. Sometimes one system zoned well, sometimes two that suit how each building is actually used.
Bring us in early and duct routes, plant positions and electrical capacity get designed in rather than worked around. Cheaper and neater than retrofitting later.
Rammed earth, mud brick, strawbale and passive designs all hold and lose heat differently. Sizing these off a floor plan alone is how people end up disappointed.
If you are running solar or battery, the system should be chosen and controlled around it. Plenty of Ranges properties can shift most of their heating and cooling load onto their own generation.
These jobs are won or lost before anyone picks up a tool. Here is how we approach them.
Subfloor, roof cavity, wall construction, ceiling type, electrical capacity, where plant can realistically sit. You cannot design around a house you have not been under.
Usually there is more than one way to do it. We will lay out what each approach costs, what it involves and what it compromises, then let you choose rather than presenting one number.
If a job needs extra work, you hear it at quote stage. We would rather lose the job up front than surprise you halfway through with something we saw coming.
If something genuinely is not worth doing, or another approach suits you better, we will say so. Sometimes the honest answer is a smaller job than you came to us for.
Worth knowing: an external or underfloor system solves a lot of homes that get written off for having no roof space, and it may attract a rebate too.
Tell us what makes it difficult. We will come and look at it properly, and give you a straight answer about what is realistic and what it costs.
Our service area runs along the Hume Highway up to Broadford, west across to Heathcote and Castlemaine, down through Daylesford, Creswick and Ballarat, then across Meredith, Bacchus Marsh and Melton, and back to Sunbury. Everything inside this line, we do. Sitting just outside it? Give us a call and we will let you know.
Check your suburbWe are an authorised Brivis and Rinnai dealer and a Rinnai Trusted Climate Specialist. We buy direct from the manufacturer, our technicians are factory trained on their equipment, and we carry genuine parts on the van rather than whatever fits.
