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A house, and nobody left to ask
What to find out about the heating and cooling in a house you did not choose, in what order, and which parts of it are genuinely not urgent.
Three things to hold on to, because this is usually happening during a difficult month.
One: almost none of it is urgent. There is exactly one exception, below. Everything else — the age of the equipment, whether it should be replaced, what it costs to run — can wait until you have the information and the time. Anybody creating urgency about the rest is selling.
Two: the equipment can tell you most of what the person could. Rating plates carry model and serial numbers, and the serial generally encodes a manufacture date. A permit record at the city usually gives an installation date and often the installer’s name. Between them you can reconstruct a history nobody wrote down.
Three: we do not advise on estates. Who can authorise work, what a trust allows, what an executor may spend, what has to be disclosed at a sale — none of that is ours and we will not have an opinion about it. We describe equipment accurately in writing so that whoever does decide has something real to decide with.
And the exception. Gas appliances get checked before anything else. A furnace or water heater nobody has looked at for years, in a house that may have been closed up, is the one thing on this page that does not wait a season. Combustion, heat exchanger, flue. If there is a gas appliance and no working carbon monoxide alarm in the house, fit one this week — they cost very little and they are the only part of this that is about safety rather than money.
Pick what you have found and how the house came to you. Everything below is written out in full.
We are not going to tell you who may sign for what; that is for whoever is administering the estate and their advisers. What we can tell you is what is practical while the paperwork runs, because a great deal of the useful work needs nobody’s permission.
What can be done now. A survey and a written record cost little and commit nobody. Finding and identifying every piece of equipment, photographing the plates, establishing ages, testing gas appliances and writing down what condition everything is in — that document is useful to the estate, to a sale and to whoever ends up with the house, and it is not a work order.
What genuinely should not wait. Safety. If there is a gas appliance in the house, it should be checked, and a carbon monoxide alarm should be in it. That is not a discretionary improvement and nobody sensible will object to it.
What should wait. Everything else. Replacements, upgrades, anything with a real number on it. Not because it is forbidden, but because decisions made under time pressure by people who do not yet know what they own are the ones that get regretted.
And the practical point about access. A house in probate is frequently empty, and empty houses accumulate small problems — a blocked drain, a dead thermostat battery, something in the ductwork. Somebody looking once is worth more than nobody looking for eight months.
You do not know what is installed
The commonest starting point, and it is a morning’s work to fix rather than a mystery.
Find everything first. Outdoor units on the side or the roof. The furnace or air handler, which in this county will be in a hall closet, a garage, an attic or a crawlspace. Any ductless heads. Thermostats. The gas shut-off and the electrical disconnects. It is worth knowing where those last two are regardless of anything else.
Then photograph the rating plates. Model and serial numbers, on a plate on the casing or inside a panel. The serial generally encodes the manufacture date, which gives you a floor for the age.
Then search the permit record. Your city or county keeps them and they are usually available on request. A permit gives you an installation date and often the installing contractor, which is how people find out who fitted a system nobody remembers.
What you will typically end up with: equipment of a known age, an idea of who installed it, and no maintenance history at all. That is a perfectly ordinary position and it is enough to make decisions from.
It is clearly very old
Resist the obvious conclusion for a moment, because age on its own is not a finding.
An old system that works is an old system that works. If it is correctly charged, moves the air it should and passes its safety checks, it is not a problem waiting to happen — it is equipment with fewer years ahead of it than behind it. The measurements say more than the date does, and they take half an hour.
What age does change is the arithmetic on a repair. A significant failure on very old equipment is a genuine replacement conversation, because spending heavily on a system with limited life left is money poorly placed. That is a judgement to make when something fails, not in advance.
The two exceptions, where age matters on its own. A gas appliance whose heat exchanger or flue is in poor condition is a safety matter, full stop. And very old cooling equipment may use a refrigerant that is now difficult and expensive to obtain, which changes what a repair costs and is worth knowing before something goes wrong rather than during.
And one thing that is not a reason: that it looks dated. Plenty of unattractive old equipment has years left in it.
Something is not working
Then the question is whether it is a small fault or the end of the system, and those look identical from the hallway.
Get it diagnosed before anybody quotes a replacement. A great many “the system is dead” calls on an inherited house turn out to be a capacitor, a contactor, a float switch that has done its job because a drain blocked, a thermostat with flat batteries, or a breaker somebody turned off years ago and forgot. Those are small.
If it is genuinely a major component — a compressor, a heat exchanger, a coil — then you have a real decision, and it should be made with three numbers in front of you: what the repair costs, what a replacement costs, and what the equipment’s remaining life realistically is. We will give you all three and say which way we would go.
What to be careful of. A failure in an inherited house is the single easiest situation in this trade in which to sell a replacement, because nobody in the room has any history with the equipment and everybody wants it dealt with. Ask for the diagnosis in writing before you agree to anything.
The house has been empty a while
Empty houses have their own list, and most of it is cheap.
Drains and traps. Condensate lines block when nothing has run through them, and plumbing traps dry out, which lets smells back into the house. Both look like something serious and are usually neither.
Batteries and settings. A thermostat with dead batteries will read as a dead system. So will a system left switched off at a disconnect somebody moved for painting.
Animals. Rodents in ductwork, nests in an outdoor unit, something in a flue. Unpleasant, common in a house that has been quiet, and worth knowing about before the system is run.
And seized parts. Motors, dampers and contactors that have not moved in a year sometimes do not want to start. Occasionally that is a failure; frequently it is a component that needs freeing.
The sensible order: look before you run it. Starting a system that has been standing, without checking what is in it or whether the drains are clear, is how a first visit to an empty house ends with water down a wall.
Somebody has already quoted for a new system
It may well be right. It is also the situation where a second opinion is worth the most it will ever be worth, and we would say that even if we were the ones who had quoted.
Ask the quoting contractor three things, in writing. What specifically has failed or is failing, named as a component rather than as “the system is tired”. What measurements were taken. And what the repair would cost if you chose it instead.
Then look at what the quote contains. Is the equipment size stated as a number? Was a load calculation done on the house? What is happening to the ductwork? Is the permit included? A quote missing those is not cheaper, it is less complete.
And take the time. Unless the house is unheatable in winter or there is a safety finding, there is no reason to decide this week. The pressure to settle everything quickly is real when an estate is being wound up, and it is not a good reason to fix a fifteen-year decision in an afternoon.
If the first contractor was right, we will say so. That happens, and there is nothing for us to sell you that day.
It is yours now and settled
Then you can act on anything, and the useful question is the order.
Safety first, then information, then decisions. Gas appliances checked and a carbon monoxide alarm in place. Then the survey and the written record. Then, with that in hand, whatever the house actually needs — which is frequently less than expected.
One thing worth doing early even though it is not urgent: if you intend to keep the house, start the maintenance record now. A dated service this year is the first line of a history the house has never had, and it matters for warranties, for a future sale and for knowing whether anything is drifting.
It is still going through probate
See the note above, which is the substance of it: a survey commits nobody, safety does not wait, and everything with a number on it should.
The one thing to add is about keeping the paperwork. Whatever we write down now will still be useful in six months to whoever ends up responsible, and it is far easier to produce while the house is accessible than after it has been closed up again.
Several of you own it between you
The situation where a written document earns its keep most, and for a reason that has nothing to do with equipment.
When several people share a decision about a house, the disagreements are usually not about what to do but about what is actually true — how old it is, whether it works, what it would cost. A survey that states all three, in writing, moves the conversation from opinion to arithmetic, and it is the same document for everybody.
What we will not do is take a side. If two of you want to replace and two do not, we will give you the measurements and the options and the costs, and we will not tell you what the family should do. We have been asked and we decline.
And we will deal with whoever you nominate. It is much simpler for everybody if one person is the contact, and it prevents three separate conversations producing three different versions of what we said.
You are preparing to sell it
Then the calculation is different, and the honest advice is mostly to do less than you might expect.
What is worth doing. The safety checks, always. A service, so the system is clean and working on the day somebody views it. And the written record, because a buyer’s inspector will raise the equipment and a document that answers the questions in advance is worth more than its cost.
What is usually not worth doing. Replacing a working system to improve the sale. It very rarely returns what it costs, and a buyer’s surveyor will note a new system and move on rather than paying extra for it. The exception is a system that genuinely does not work, which becomes a negotiating point whether you address it or not.
What you should find out either way. Whether past work was permitted. Unpermitted work surfaces in disclosure or at inspection, and it is much better to know about it before you list than during escrow. Your city keeps the record.
We will not tell you what to disclose. That is a question for whoever is handling the sale.
The next step
Photograph every rating plate you can find, and locate the gas shut-off and the disconnects. That is an hour with a phone and a torch, and it is most of what anybody needs to help you.
The next step
Have the gas appliances checked, and have the rest measured rather than judged by its age. If the numbers are good, an old system that works is not a problem to solve this year.
The next step
Get a diagnosis in writing before anybody quotes a replacement. A large share of these turn out to be a small part. If it is genuinely major, ask for repair cost, replacement cost and remaining life, all three.
The next step
Have somebody look before you run it. Drains, traps, nests and seized parts. Starting a standing system without checking is how a first visit ends with water down a wall.
The next step
Ask what specifically failed, what was measured, and what a repair would cost — in writing. Then take the time. Unless there is a safety finding, nothing about this needs deciding this week.
What we will not do
We will not advise you about the estate. Not who may authorise work, not what a trust permits, not what must be disclosed. We describe equipment. Other people decide.
We will not create urgency. There is exactly one urgent item on this page and it is gas safety. Everything else can wait for information and time, and anybody telling you otherwise in this situation should be treated carefully.
We will not take a side in a family disagreement. We will give everybody the same document and the same numbers.
And we will tell you when the answer is to do nothing. A working system on an inherited house frequently needs a service and a record and no more, and that is a perfectly good outcome for a visit.
The morning that produces a document
A visit, everything found and identified, the plates photographed, the gas appliances checked, and a written record of what is in the house and what condition it is in. It commits you to nothing and it is the thing the house has never had.