Most of what goes wrong tells you what it is, if you know how to read it
Union Crest works on heating, cooling and ventilation in apartments, houses and small commercial premises across Yonkers. This site is written the way we explain things on the doorstep: what you are seeing, and what it actually means.
Symptom on the left, cause on the right
None of these is a diagnosis. They are the translations we find ourselves making over and over, and knowing them is the difference between a five-minute phone call and a wasted visit.
- The radiators are hot at the bottom and cold at the top
Air trapped in the system, on a hot-water system. Bleeding it is a two-minute job. If it comes back within weeks, something is drawing air in — usually a fill valve, an expansion tank or a small leak — and bleeding it forever is treating the symptom.
- One radiator is stone cold and the rest are fine
On hot water, a zone valve, a circulator or a closed valve. On steam, almost always the air vent on that radiator, which costs very little and is a common repair. Either way the boiler is working — it is proving it everywhere else in the building.
- The boiler runs constantly and the apartment is still cold
Either the heat is going somewhere else in the building, or it is leaving faster than it arrives. In a pre-war Yonkers building the usual answers are an unbalanced riser, a window frame that has given up, or a thermostat in a hallway that is warmer than the rooms it controls.
- The air conditioning ices up
Low airflow or low charge. Low airflow is a filter, a blocked coil or a blower problem; low charge means a leak, because refrigerant is not consumed. Switch the cooling off, leave the fan running, and call. Running a compressor with a frozen coil is how compressors fail.
- There is water on the floor under the air handler
Condensate that is not getting to the drain — a blocked line, a dry trap or a corroded pan. Small now, expensive in a month, and in an apartment it becomes somebody else’s ceiling.
- The bathroom fan runs but the mirror still fogs
Very often the fan is running into the ceiling void or an attic rather than outside, or the duct is crushed or disconnected. It is one of the most common faults we find and one of the cheapest to put right.
Window units, sleeves and PTACs
A large part of Yonkers cools with a box in a window or a sleeve in a wall. Almost nothing written about air conditioning is written for those people, and a good deal of what they are told is wrong.
Six symptoms, translated
What you can check yourself, what it actually means, and — the part that matters in a rented apartment — who is in a position to fix it. On three of the six that is not us and not you.
Why it is on the site
Because the honest answer to a window unit that is nine years old and undersized is often “this is not worth a service call”, and a contractor willing to say that on a public page is the one you ring when something bigger goes wrong.
Apartments and houses, shops and suites
Homes
Apartments, two- and three-family houses, and single family across Yonkers and the villages north of it. Steam and hot-water heating, gas boilers and furnaces, central air, ductless, and the window and through-wall units that a lot of the housing stock still runs on.
Businesses
Shops on the avenues, restaurants, salons, professional suites and clinics. Planned maintenance with a record per unit, extract with the make-up air it needs, and fit-out work commissioned properly rather than switched on and left.
What you can ask us, and what you will get
- What will it cost?
A fixed figure on the phone once we know what is installed. There is no price list on this site, because a zone valve and a boiler replacement are not the same conversation and a number on a web page would be a fiction for one of them.
- How quickly can you get here?
A real answer when you call, for that day. Not a promise printed in advance — on the first genuinely cold night of the year nobody in this county can honestly promise two hours.
- How much will this save me?
We will tell you what a specific change does and what it costs. We will not put a percentage on your bill, because that depends on your building, your habits and your tariff, and anybody who quotes one from a web page has invented it.
- How long will it last?
Unknown, honestly. Two identical boilers in two identical buildings last very different lengths of time. The plate tells you how old it is; nothing tells you the future.
Asked often enough to answer here
One radiator is cold and the rest are fine. Is the boiler failing?
No — the boiler is proving it works everywhere else in the building. On a one-pipe steam system a single cold radiator is usually the air vent on that radiator or the pitch of the pipe. On hot water it is a zone valve, a circulator, a closed valve or an air lock. All ordinary repairs, and none of them is the boiler.
Is it worth repairing a window air conditioner?
Often not, and we would rather say so than take the call. There is very little inside a window unit worth repairing once it is around eight years old, and the parts and labour approach the price of a new one. A through-wall sleeve unit or a PTAC is different — those are worth servicing, and the sleeve itself is worth keeping.
My air conditioner cools but the room still feels damp. Why?
Almost always because the unit is too big for the room. Cooling and dehumidifying are two different jobs and the second only happens while the machine is running. A unit that satisfies the thermostat in four minutes never runs long enough to pull moisture out of the air, which is why buying the biggest unit that fits the window is a mistake.
I rent. Is this my problem or the building’s?
Depends what it is, and it is worth asking on the phone before anybody drives out. A cold radiator in your apartment while the rest of the line is warm is usually fixable at your end. A whole line of cold apartments is the riser, the boiler or the controls, and that is the building’s equipment. We will tell you which, and put it in writing if that helps you with the managing agent.
The plug on my air conditioner gets warm. What should I do?
Stop using it and unplug it. A warm plug means resistance where there should be none — a worn outlet, a loose terminal or a damaged cord — and it is how fires start. The next call is to a licensed electrician rather than to us, and if you rent it should be reported to the building in writing the same day.
Which areas do you cover?
Yonkers, Bronxville, Tuckahoe, Eastchester, Hastings-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Mount Vernon and Scarsdale.
Where we are
2595 Central Park Ave, Yonkers, NY 10710. Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.
We cover Yonkers, Bronxville, Tuckahoe, Eastchester, Hastings-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Mount Vernon and Scarsdale.