Most of Albany was built before any of this existed
Grand Harbor works on heating, cooling and ventilation in buildings that predate ductwork, predate air conditioning and in a good many cases predate electricity. Putting modern equipment into them is a different job from installing it in a new house, and pretending otherwise is how it goes wrong.
Four tickets
Everything we are asked for falls under one of these, in houses and in premises alike.
Steam, hot water and gas
Albany runs on old heating. One-pipe and two-pipe steam, hot-water boilers with circulators and zone valves, and gas furnaces where ductwork exists. Serviced with a combustion analyser and a written result, and repaired rather than replaced where the readings allow it.
A cold radiator is almost never the boiler. It is a vent, a valve, a circulator or the pitch of a pipe — and the boiler is proving it works everywhere else in the building.
Cooling a building that has no ducts
Ductless heads, small-duct high-velocity systems run through chases and closets, and window or through-wall units where those are genuinely the right answer. What is possible depends on the building far more than on the equipment.
The hardest question is rarely indoors. It is where the outdoor unit can legally and practically go, and there is a whole page on this site about it.
Extract, make-up air and stuffiness
Bathroom and kitchen extract that actually terminates outside, commercial kitchen canopies with the make-up air they need, and offices where the complaint is stuffiness rather than temperature.
An old building that has been weatherised behaves differently from the one the appliances were installed in, and the ventilation is where that shows up first.
A record, not a tick-sheet
Annual on houses, twice a year on premises, with combustion readings, pressures and filter sizes written down so the next visit has something to compare against and the file shows a trend.
On a first commercial visit we tag and record what is installed, what it serves, and its real age from the serial number.
Where can the outdoor unit actually go?
In a downtown Albany building this is the question that decides whether a cooling job is straightforward, expensive or impossible — and it is almost never asked until after somebody has quoted.
Five places, three kinds of owner
Flat roof, rear yard, side alley, the front of the building, or a window. Crossed with whether you own the building, own a unit in it, or rent. The answer changes completely, and so does who has to say yes before anything is ordered.
Because the answer is often not ours to give
A co-op board, a landlord, a neighbour with a bedroom window, or a historic district review can each stop a job that is technically simple. We would rather say that on a web page than discover it on the day the equipment arrives.
The page does not tell you what any of those bodies will decide. It tells you which of them you have to ask.
Houses and premises
Homes
Rowhouses and brownstones in the downtown neighbourhoods, two- and three-families, apartments in converted buildings, and the single-family stock out towards the suburbs. Steam and hot-water heating, cooling added rather than built in, and ventilation that was never designed.
Businesses
Offices and professional suites on and around State Street, storefronts, restaurants, clinics and small industrial. Planned maintenance with a record per unit, fit-out work in floors that have been fitted out four times before, and extract with the make-up air it needs.
What this website will not tell you
Each one would be a number we invented.
| Not stated | Why |
|---|---|
| A price | Running a line set down an open basement and running one through four floors of finished rowhouse are not the same job. You get a fixed figure once we have seen the building. |
| A response time | We will not promise an hour on the first cold night of the year when half the Capital District has lost heat. |
| A saving | “Cut your bills by a third” depends on your building, your habits and your tariff. Nobody can know it from a web page. |
| Whether you will get permission | Boards, landlords and review bodies decide that, not us. We will tell you which of them you have to ask. |
Asked often enough to answer here
One radiator is cold and the rest are fine. Is the boiler failing?
Almost certainly not — the boiler is proving it works everywhere else in the building. On one-pipe steam a single cold radiator is usually the air vent on that radiator, or the pitch of the radiator or its pipe. On hot water it is a zone valve, a circulator, a closed valve or an air lock. All of those are ordinary repairs and none of them is the boiler.
My steam pipes hiss. Is that a fault?
Hissing from a radiator vent while the system fills is normal and expected — that is the vent doing exactly what it is for. Hammering is different: that is water sitting where steam needs to travel, usually because a radiator or a pipe has lost its pitch, and it is hard on the system and worth correcting.
Can I get air conditioning in a building with no ductwork?
Usually yes, by one of three routes: ductless heads with a small line set back to an outdoor unit, a small-duct high-velocity system run through closets and chases, or window and through-wall units where those are genuinely right. The building chooses between them more than you do. The harder question is almost always where the outdoor unit can go, and there is a page on this site about exactly that.
Do I need permission to put a condenser outside?
It depends on where it goes and what you own, and it is much cheaper to establish before a survey than after an install. If you own a unit in a co-op or condo, anything outside your own four walls is common property and the board decides. If you rent, the landlord decides. And anything visible from the street may need review if the property is in a historic district — the city’s planning and preservation staff will tell you, and asking is free. We will not guess on any of those.
How is a new steam boiler sized?
From the connected radiation — the actual radiators in the building — not from the rating of the boiler being removed and not from floor area. Getting that wrong is the most common reason a new boiler performs worse than the one it replaced, and it is why the survey takes longer than people expect.
Which areas do you cover?
Albany, Menands, Colonie, Delmar, Rensselaer, Watervliet, Guilderland and Troy.
Where we are
126 State St, Albany, NY 12207. Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.
We cover Albany, Menands, Colonie, Delmar, Rensselaer, Watervliet, Guilderland and Troy.