Commercial HVAC in Springfield.

Springfield’s commercial stock is working buildings: restaurants and strip retail along Backlick Road and Franconia Road, auto shops and light industrial space in the pockets off Loisdale Road and Industrial Drive, and offices near the Franconia-Springfield area. The calls we get here are less about comfort and more about whether the kitchen or the shop can open.

The one that surprises owners is make-up air. A kitchen exhausts a lot of air through the hood, and a make-up air unit puts it back. When the blower on one Springfield restaurant’s unit died, the dining room started smelling like gas. Nothing was leaking: with no air coming in, the brick oven was pulling air backwards down its own flue. We replaced the blower motor and belt, and the smell went with it. If your dining room smells like gas, call the gas company first, then check the make-up air.

Walk-ins here run old. The same restaurant’s beer cooler had an R-22 compressor that we replaced, and a produce walk-in from the late 1990s needed a leaking connection brazed and a corroded service valve fixed. R-22 is gone from production, so a box that old is a repair-or-replace conversation every time, and we put both options in writing.

Auto shops are the other Springfield regular. We’ve worked on a shop’s pair of gas furnaces, the kind that heat a bay with the door opening all day, and set the shop up on our commercial membership so both get a look every year before the cold hits. A shop furnace sees dust and fumes a house furnace never does.