London's heritage streets. Beautiful houses, and the ones where the standard answer to every heating and cooling question is usually wrong.
Old North has some of the most intact Victorian and Edwardian architecture in the city, with streetscapes that still read the way they did a hundred years ago. A century home here means anything built up to roughly the 1920s, and a good number of them are designated under the Ontario Heritage Act, which brings protections and also restrictions on what you are allowed to change.
What that means mechanically: many of these houses were built to be heated by radiators fed from a boiler, and they have no ductwork at all. Somebody will still cheerfully quote you for a central air system. Ask them where the ducts are going to go.
Plenty of these houses are still on hot water heat, and a well kept boiler system is genuinely comfortable. The mistake is assuming it has to be torn out. Often it does not.
This is the Old North question. A ductless system puts a discreet head in the rooms that matter and leaves the plaster, the trim and the ceilings alone. I will walk the house with you and show you where the heads and the line runs would actually go.
If your house is designated there are limits on what can be fixed to a street facing elevation. That is worth knowing before you choose equipment, not after. It usually changes where things go rather than whether you can have them.
“Mozee thoroughly inspected for gas leaks upon completion. Mozee says, no bubble, no trouble.”
Dane Howard, Google review
Yes. A ductless system is made for exactly this. It is the most common thing I fit in the older parts of London and it does not mean opening up the ceilings.
Usually not. A boiler and radiators is a comfortable way to heat a house of this age. If it is working, I would rather keep it running than sell you a conversion you do not need.
It can limit what goes on a street facing wall. It rarely stops the job, it just changes where things sit, and it is much easier to plan around at the start.
Installation, repairs and service on all of it, tested before I leave.
London and the surrounding area. Just outside it? Ring anyway and I will tell you straight whether I can get to you.
