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W.F. Smith is a family-owned heating and cooling company that serves Richboro, PA, the crossroads at the center of Northampton Township in Bucks County. We install, fix, and take care of heating and cooling in the two-story homes that make up most of this market. Our shop has been on State Road in Northeast Philadelphia since 1946.
Our office tells you the visit fee before we come out, and estimates for new systems are free. Our work covers air conditioners, gas furnaces, heat pumps, ductless systems, building ducts, and indoor air quality. We do not work on boilers, water heaters, oil systems, or steam systems.
Lennox is the brand we install most for regular systems, and Mitsubishi Electric for ductless systems. Our technicians also service other big brands.
The homes that grew out from this crossroads went up mostly between the 1960s and the 1990s, and two stories is the normal shape here, not the exception. A two-story home does something a one-story home never does: it stacks its own heat. Warm air climbs the stairs to the bedroom level and settles there. The thermostat downstairs reads a temperature nobody upstairs would recognize, and the system shuts off thinking the job is done.
Cooling a two-story home is a question of getting air where it needs to go before it is a question of how much cooling power you have. We fix, replace, install, and take care of central air conditioners across Richboro. A technician finds the problem and tells you the price before any work starts. Common calls are nothing at the upstairs vents, air that is not cold, ice on the coil, and a silent outdoor unit. Adding size to fix an upstairs complaint usually makes it worse, since a bigger system runs shorter cycles, and shorter cycles move the least air to the far end of the ducts.
When we replace a system, we start by measuring the home, not by copying the old label. Measuring room by room shows how much belongs upstairs, and that number points to rebalancing the vents, splitting the home into zones, or adding a second system.
Heat behaves the opposite way in the same stack, and in winter the bedrooms stay comfortable. The upper floor holds warm air while the first floor calls for more, so the furnace runs to satisfy the coldest room. A winter complaint in Richboro usually sounds like a cold living room, not a cold bedroom.
Furnace repairs, new installs, replacements, and yearly check-ups are the heating side of what we do. A furnace that will not start usually has a dirty flame sensor, a failed igniter, a control board problem, or a clogged filter.
Boiler work, steam work, and oil heating all stay outside what we do. A Richboro home heated by one of those can still have its air conditioning designed and installed by us.
A heat pump changes the two-story math by making a second system affordable enough to make sense. One outdoor unit can serve the upper floor on its own and leave the original system to the first floor, so each level holds its own temperature. New heat pumps still work well even when it is well below freezing outside.
Where a home already has gas heat, we can pair a heat pump with the furnace, letting the heat pump handle the mild months and leaving the coldest weather to the furnace. A control switches between the two based on the outside temperature.
We install, repair, replace, and take care of heat pumps. Rebates from the equipment makers and the Electrical Association of Philadelphia often apply, and payment plans are available for some jobs.
Ductless gives an upper floor its own answer without rebuilding the ducts serving the first floor. An indoor unit in each bedroom, or one on the landing, runs on its own thermostat and stops borrowing cooling power from downstairs. Each indoor unit needs just one small hole in the outside wall, which keeps the work out of ceilings and closets. Mitsubishi Electric is the brand we install most for ductless systems.
The same approach fixes a room the original floor plan never solved, usually a converted attic or the bedroom furthest from the main system. Adding an indoor unit there costs the downstairs nothing, which is the opposite of what a bigger central system would do.
An upstairs cooling failure usually gets noticed at bedtime, when a Richboro family finds out the second floor never cooled down. W.F. Smith offers after-hours help for emergencies. We do not run regular service around the clock.
Our office answers calls Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. After that, an answering service passes the job to the technician on call, who calls you back to ask what the system is doing.
Evening and Saturday visits cost more. Sundays and holidays cost even more than that, and nobody gets sent out until you have agreed to that price. Customers with a maintenance plan get seen first, which matters on the first hot weekend when the whole township calls at once.
Richboro anchors Northampton Township, and our routes run out from it.
We also cover Ivyland, Newtown, Warminster, Philadelphia, and more than 20 other communities across Bucks and Montgomery Counties, plus Lambertville, New Jersey.
Older homes along the main roads, a century ahead of the subdivisions around them, on tight lots.
Two-story Colonial homes with a single first-floor return vent, most now on their second or third system.
Larger homes, more bedrooms upstairs, and a stairwell moving more air than the original plan accounted for.
Also Northampton Township, with an older village core and a different set of problems.
Also Northampton Township, built a decade earlier on former farmland.
Partly in this township and partly in Upper Southampton, with post-war homes added onto again and again.
W.F. Smith has worked in Bucks County homes since 1946, and the Smith family still owns the company and works in the office. Our five owners have more than 140 years of work experience between them. Our main technicians have worked here for over 20 years each on average. We hold Pennsylvania Home Improvement Contractor license PA003700 and have been accredited by the BBB since 1991.
On a Richboro job, that long history shows up as knowing where the air actually ends up. We have cut return vents into second-floor hallways, rebalanced supply vents until the far bedrooms finally got their share, and installed a separate system upstairs where no amount of rebalancing was going to fix it. Parts on repair work come with a one-year warranty, and new equipment is registered for its full warranty from the maker.