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Bay Air Heating & Cooling Bay Air Heating & Cooling is a licensed, bonded, & insured HVAC contractor serving San Francisco and Marin County.

Residential & commercial HVAC repairs, installations, and replacements including furnaces, AC systems, and indoor air quality.

Are gas water heaters really being banned in the Bay Area? Not quite.Here's where things stand for San Francisco and Mar...
10/09/2026

Are gas water heaters really being banned in the Bay Area? Not quite.
Here's where things stand for San Francisco and Marin homeowners:
Your existing gas water heater is fine. The regional rule applies only when one is replaced.

The official start date is January 2027. The Air District has proposed pushing it to January 2028 and adding exemptions for homes with tight spaces or small electrical panels, and for lower-income owners. The board is expected to take that up in November.

After the start date, a replacement would generally be electric, usually a heat pump water heater. They work well, but they need more air, more height, a drain, and the right electrical supply. Plenty of older homes here have a water heater squeezed into a closet that offers none of that.

A ten-minute check you can do this weekend:
1. Find the manufacture date on the tank's label.
2. Note where the tank sits and how much open space is around it.
3. See whether there's a drain and an outlet nearby.
4. Read the number on your main breaker. Look only, and leave the panel cover on.

If the tank is past ten years old, having those four answers makes the replacement conversation much easier, whenever it happens.
Can't make sense of the date code on your label? Tell us the brand in the comments and we'll explain how to read it.

If you own a small commercial building or run a business in one, take a look at the nameplate on your rooftop or outdoor...
09/28/2026

If you own a small commercial building or run a business in one, take a look at the nameplate on your rooftop or outdoor unit. Somewhere on it you'll see the refrigerant type. If it says R-410A, you've probably heard something alarming about it this year.

R-410A equipment that's already installed isn't illegal to run. It can still be repaired and recharged. The changes in the news apply to new equipment, and California has its own refrigerant rules separate from the federal ones, so national headlines don't always apply here.

What matters more is whether your system is holding its refrigerant. If a technician has added refrigerant more than once in the past couple of years, there's a leak somewhere. R-410A is expected to keep getting more expensive, so a slow leak you've been living with will cost more every year. On rooftops near the bay, salt air speeds up corrosion on outdoor coils, which is a common leak source.

One question worth asking at your next service visit: "Has the leak been found, or are we just adding refrigerant?"

In a lot of homes, the heating ducts can run through the garage underneath the house and they can also often run through...
09/24/2026

In a lot of homes, the heating ducts can run through the garage underneath the house and they can also often run through crawlspaces.

Why it matters this time of year: if a duct in one of those spaces has come loose, been crushed, or lost its insulation, the warm air cools off before it ever reaches your room. From inside, it feels exactly like a broken heater.

Here's a simple way to tell the difference. If most rooms are warm and one or two are getting cool air, the problem is more likely the ductwork than the furnace or heat pump. If every room is getting cool air, start at the thermostat and the equipment instead.

One more thing worth knowing: heat pumps deliver air that feels less hot than a furnace's, and that's normal. The better test is whether the house is slowly warming up.

Getting cool air from your vents right now? Tell us whether it's the whole house or just certain rooms, and we'll point you in the right direction.

If you turned your heat on for the first time this fall and caught smell of something burning, here's what's likely goin...
09/16/2026

If you turned your heat on for the first time this fall and caught smell of something burning, here's what's likely going on.

Most of the time, it's just dust. While your furnace sat unused for months, a layer of it settled on the heat exchanger and burners, and now it's burning off. That smell usually clears within about an hour, and once it does, you're in the clear.

What isn't normal: a smell that lingers past that first hour, comes back every time the furnace cycles, or smells like plastic, electrical components, or rotten eggs instead of dust. Any of those mean it's time to turn the system off and get it looked at, rather than waiting to see if it goes away on its own.

One thing that's easy to miss here in San Francisco and Marin County: because our heating needs are so mild and inconsistent, a lot of furnaces, especially older ones tucked into tight closets or crawl spaces, go many months between real use. That's exactly why a single fall safety check is worth having on the calendar, instead of waiting for a smell to be the thing that reminds you.

If you want a second opinion on what you're hearing, seeing, or smelling from your system this fall, we're happy to help.

A lot of homeowners are still planning heat pump projects around rebate numbers that don't exist anymore. Here's what's ...
09/11/2026

A lot of homeowners are still planning heat pump projects around rebate numbers that don't exist anymore. Here's what's actually true as of this month:

The federal tax credit that used to knock $2,000 off a heat pump expired at the end of 2025. California's income-qualified rebate, HEEHRA, has been fully reserved statewide since February, so any new request goes on a waitlist rather than getting funded right away. PG&E doesn't run its own standalone heat pump rebate either, it points customers to the state's Switch Is On tool instead.

The good news: San Francisco and Marin homeowners still have local options that don't depend on any of that. CleanPowerSF offers bill credits for going electric, and MCE runs its own heat pump rebate through approved contractors in Marin. Both are worth checking directly rather than trusting whatever dollar figure shows up in a search result, since a lot of what's ranking right now is already out of date.

If you're weighing a heat pump against a straight system replacement, checking what you actually qualify for today is a better starting point than planning around last year's numbers.

Here's something we see every year around this time. A home does fine all summer, then the rain starts, the furnace fina...
09/03/2026

Here's something we see every year around this time.

A home does fine all summer, then the rain starts, the furnace finally has to run, and one particular room just will not warm up.

The instinct is to blame the furnace. Most of the time, the furnace is working exactly as it should. The real issue is usually sitting in the ductwork, in leaks or disconnected sections that did not matter much when the system barely ran, and now do.
A few things worth checking before assuming the worst: is it always the same room? Is airflow noticeably weaker at that room's vent compared to others? Has your heating bill jumped more than it did during a similarly cold stretch last year?
None of these confirm anything on their own, but together they usually point toward a duct issue rather than a furnace one, and it is almost always fixable without replacing anything.
If a room in your San Francisco or Marin home has never quite kept up, we're happy to take a look before you spend money guessing at the fix.

Have you noticed your house needs the heat on when you leave in the morning, then feels like it needs the AC by the time...
08/26/2026

Have you noticed your house needs the heat on when you leave in the morning, then feels like it needs the AC by the time you're home for lunch?
Late August and September are when San Francisco and Marin see some of the widest swings between morning and afternoon temperatures. The marine layer that keeps summer mornings cool starts pulling back this time of year, so once the fog clears, afternoons can warm up fast.
The tricky part is that a lot of home HVAC systems are built to do one thing well at a time, either heat or cool, and often only in one stage: fully on or fully off. That works fine when the outdoor temperature holds fairly steady through the day. It works a lot less well when a house needs both heat and cooling within the same few hours.
Before assuming a system needs replacing, it's worth knowing that leaky or undersized ductwork can make a same-day swing feel worse than it should, and that older single-stage equipment tends to overshoot the target temperature rather than easing into it. Heat pumps and mini-split systems can handle both heating and cooling from the same equipment, and many modulate their output instead of running at full blast or not at all, which is part of why they tend to manage this kind of swing more comfortably.
If this sounds like your house right now, it's worth having someone look at what's actually driving it before deciding what to do about it.

If your furnace is on its way out, you're probably hearing two different recommendations right now: replace it with anot...
08/18/2026

If your furnace is on its way out, you're probably hearing two different recommendations right now: replace it with another furnace, or switch to a heat pump. Both can be right, depending on the house.

Here's the thing most comparisons get wrong for our area: the "heat pumps don't work in cold weather" concern doesn't really apply in San Francisco or Marin. Our winters just don't get cold enough for that to be the deciding factor.

What actually matters is your electrical panel capacity, your existing ductwork, and whether you already have gas appliances you'd rather keep using. A home with limited ductwork and no central air might be a great fit for a ductless heat pump. A home with a gas line already in place and a panel that's maxed out might be better off sticking with a furnace.

The best next step isn't picking a side online. It's having someone actually look at your home's heating and cooling load, your panel, and your ducts before deciding. We wrote up the full breakdown, including the questions worth asking any contractor before you commit either way. Link in the comments.

Getting quotes for a heat pump or mini-split and someone mentions your electrical panel might need an upgrade? A lot of ...
08/12/2026

Getting quotes for a heat pump or mini-split and someone mentions your electrical panel might need an upgrade?

A lot of San Francisco and Marin homes, especially anything built between the 1950s and 1980s, were wired for 100-amp electrical service. That was plenty for a house with gas heat and a handful of standard appliances. It wasn't sized with a heat pump in mind.

Here's what actually matters: the panel's age alone doesn't tell you whether you need an upgrade. What matters is a real electrical load calculation, done by a licensed electrician, that looks at what your home is already using and what the new equipment would add. Some 100-amp homes have plenty of room left. Others don't. There's no way to know which one you are without the math.

If you're weighing a heat pump or mini-split, it's worth asking upfront whether a load calculation has actually been done, or whether "you'll probably need a panel upgrade" is just an assumption based on your panel's age. Those are two very different conversations, and you deserve the one based on the numbers.

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Marin County, CA
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