Choosing a contractor
How to Choose an HVAC Company in Charleston, SC
Eight checks, all of which you can make yourself before signing anything.
Eight checks, all of which you can make yourself before signing anything.
This is the check that is specific to heating and air. South Carolina licenses residential heating and air conditioning installers by examination, and the regulation caps that licence at five tons of cooling and 175,000 BTU per hour of heating per unit. Above that ceiling, or above ten thousand dollars of construction, the work belongs to a mechanical contractor licensed by the Contractor’s Licensing Board.
The lookup is at verify.llronline.com — not verify.llr.sc.gov, which a great many articles print and which has no DNS record at all. Air conditioning, heating, packaged equipment and refrigeration are four separate subclassifications, so it is fair to ask which one the licence actually carries.
A system replacement is permitted work, and the permit is pulled by the licensed mechanical contractor performing the installation, in their own name. A building official is required to refuse to issue one without evidence of licensure or an exemption.
Ask to see it. An installation with no permit is one an insurer can ask questions about later, and the inspection is the only independent check that the equipment was fitted the way it was sold.
A PDF forwarded by email proves nothing about whether the policy is in force. Ask for it from the agent, and ask whether workers’ compensation covers everyone who will be on your property.
Mechanical work involves refrigerant, electrical connection and, on some systems, gas — three ways for an uninsured job to become your problem.
Two heating and air quotes are only comparable if you know the outdoor unit, the indoor unit and the coil by model number, and whether they are a matched pair.
The written scope should also say what is being reused — line set, ductwork, thermostat, condensate route, electrical disconnect — because reused components are where a cheap quote gets cheap.
Sizing is a calculation from orientation, glazing, insulation, air leakage and how the house is used. Sizing from the label on the old unit repeats whatever mistake was made last time.
In this climate the usual mistake is oversizing, and the consequence is not wasted money so much as a cold, clammy house.
The rating matters less than how the business behaved when something went wrong. A calm, specific reply to a bad review tells you more than fifty five-star ratings.
For heating and air, look for how they handled a system that never got the house comfortable — that is the complaint that reveals whether sizing is taken seriously.
Ask how they size a system, and listen for whether humidity comes up. In this climate an oversized unit cools the air quickly, shuts off before it has dehumidified, and leaves the house cold and clammy. Sizing on square footage alone is the single most common local mistake.
Ask where the ductwork runs. Ducts in an unconditioned Lowcountry attic or a damp crawl space lose a meaningful share of what the system produces before it reaches a room, and no amount of new equipment fixes that.
Southeastern Renovation is a general contractor, SC licence CLG.127339, and you can check that at the link above rather than taking our word for it. It is not a mechanical licence: mechanical work is performed by a licensed mechanical subcontractor who pulls the mechanical permit in their own name. What we hold is the scope, the schedule and the work either side of the equipment — the duct chase that has to be framed, the ceiling that has to be closed, the electrical that has to be upgraded first. Scopes are written before prices.