Spring Home Heating & Cooling Systems Inc

I found Spring Home through Homestars after a disheartening couple of quotes to replace an AC failure (during the start of a heatwave) by major utility company contractors. One of whom led off with "I'll tell you right now we're not going to be competitive on price, because we don't have to be". The third company I called (a large company which does frequent work in my neighbourhood) never even returned my phone call (until two weeks later).

Cy came out personally within a couple hours of my calling, on a Saturday, and turned a quote around immediately. He took - by far - the most time to review our air conditioner, furnace room, and ducting to inform his detailed quote. Cy also immediately pointed out a ventilation issue with our furnace (which we knew about) but also a critical ducting mistake involving our hot water tank that no home inspector, contractor or service technician had noticed in the six years since we purchased the house (the exhaust to a quite old gas water tank wasn't actually connected to anything... hardly an "esoteric" issue to spot once you knew what you were looking at).

Cy quoted on a range of options for each issue at different price points - including simple temporary solutions to the issues other than the AC since that was all we had called him on originally. At no point did I feel he was trying to "upsell" us other than pointing out there were economic efficiencies to doing all the work at once (it all involved the same ductwork to the outside).

Especially welcome was the time Cy took to make very clear I understood where an access hole would have to be cut in the ceiling to perform the work, so that there were no surprises.

Within three days of my first call (again during the first major heatwave of the Summer in Toronto, when they were no doubt swamped with calls) Spring Home was able to install a new high efficiency AC unit, replace our hot water tank, and fix the various venting issues all in a single day. The total cost of all that work (including purchasing a new hot water tank outright) was still less than one of the quotes I had received to just replace the AC.

The install team was diligent and focused - showing up *exactly* on time (something I really appreciate when I have to take time off work to wait for contractors). They made a point of explaining what they had done and were very clear with instructions and manuals when they were leaving (another pet peeve).

The quality of the work appears to be top notch (I'm not going to claim any deep knowledge of AC installation) but looks much more sturdy and clean than work neighbouring units have had done (holes were patched properly, the unit was properly levelled with a concrete pad, joints and cables are all nicely tied and neatly routed. The crew were careful to use drop cloths inside the house - etc.

Even the much feared "hole in the ceiling" was very minimal and the team made sure I knew where they had tucked away the cut out piece to make repair a much simpler affair (they even put a temporary gate over it to clean it up appearance wise until I could get around to repairing it properly.

Finally - Spring Home clearly has a well developed system of checklists, reviews, follow up calls, and customer surveys to try and ensure that their work is done to a consistently high standard. Cy was always available throughout and very prompt to return phone calls and e-mails.

I absolutely would not hesitate to recommend Spring Home (and have done so already). Part of me thinks that a "10/10" review should be for some extraordinary act - but I can't honestly think of a single (reasonable) thing that they could have done to make an unpleasant experience like replacing a failed air conditioner as painless as possible.