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W.F. Smith is a family-owned heating and cooling company that serves Newtown, PA. We install, fix, and take care of heating and cooling in Newtown Borough, Newtown Township, and nearby Wrightstown. 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. We work on air conditioners, furnaces, heat pumps, ductless systems, ducts, and indoor air quality. We do not work on boilers, water heaters, oil systems, or steam systems.
Most of our new systems use Lennox or Mitsubishi Electric, and ClimateMaster for ground-based systems. Our technicians also fix other big brands, and every new system starts by measuring your home first.
Newtown has a wider mix of old and new homes than anywhere else we work. The borough was first laid out in 1684 and still has homes with solid stone walls. The township and Wrightstown have big, newer homes on large lots, some far from the nearest gas line. These two very different kinds of homes need very different plans.
Cooling a Newtown home depends on wall thickness on one side of town and room size on the other. Thick stone walls soak up heat and let it go slowly, so a borough home stays cool late in the day, then holds onto that warmth into the evening. We fix, replace, install, and take care of central air conditioners across the borough, the township, and Wrightstown. Common calls are weak airflow, a frozen coil, a leaking pipe, and an outdoor unit that will not turn on.
Bigger township homes often run two systems, one for each floor, and if one breaks down it is a good time to check the other. When we replace a system, we measure your home to find the right size instead of just copying the old size, which matters most in a big open room where the old installer may have guessed too high.
Heating in Newtown is not a simple one-fuel answer. Township streets with a gas line use gas furnaces. Homes past the gas line run on propane or plain electric heat, which changes both the equipment and how much it costs each year.
In an old house, the real limit is getting equipment inside. A staircase too narrow for a full-size unit decides what equipment you can get before anyone even talks about efficiency. We measure the path before giving you a price.
Most no-heat calls come from a problem starting the flame, a broken flame sensor, a bad thermostat, or a fan not getting enough air. A technician checks each step the furnace goes through to find where it stops.
We do not work on boilers, steam systems, or oil heating. We can still take care of the air conditioning in those homes.
A heat pump is often a better deal here than in most towns we serve, since so many Newtown homes have no gas line to compete with. Compared to propane or plain electric heat, the difference in yearly cost can be big enough to decide things on its own.
Where a gas line is present, we can pair a heat pump with a gas furnace that switches on based on how cold it is outside. Large lots open up a second option too. On big properties, a ClimateMaster ground-based system can often fit.
Rebates from the Electrical Association of Philadelphia and from the equipment makers often apply, and payment plans are available.
Ductless systems make a stone borough home comfortable without tearing it apart. There is no space inside the walls to run ducts through, and the plaster walls are worth keeping whole. An outdoor unit connects to indoor units through a small hole drilled in the wall, which does not touch the frame of the house at all. Mitsubishi Electric is the brand we install most here.
In the township, ductless is used a bit differently. An indoor unit in the room over the garage, the finished basement, or the sunroom gives that space its own thermostat.
Much of Newtown runs on propane and heat pumps instead of gas, so a breakdown after hours can leave a home with no backup heat. 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. Outside those hours, an answering service will reach the technician who is on call.
After-hours and Saturday visits cost more. Sundays and holidays cost even more than that. The technician tells you the price when they call you back, and gives you a real idea of when they can arrive, since Newtown sits at the far end of our service area. Customers with a maintenance plan get seen first.
We work the borough, the township, and Wrightstown, and a few areas keep us busiest.
We also cover Philadelphia and more than 20 other communities across Bucks and Montgomery Counties, plus Lambertville, New Jersey.
Old colonial and 1800s homes with solid stone or brick walls, where a ductless system is often the answer that works.
Older homes on small lots, where we pick the spot for the outdoor unit with the neighbor's yard in mind.
Big homes built from the 1980s on, often with two systems and a room over the garage.
Townhomes and newer neighborhoods where the equipment sits in a small utility closet.
Wooded properties where a lot of fall leaves land on the outdoor unit.
Large lots, well water, septic systems, and many homes with no gas line, where heat pumps, ground-based systems, and separate controls for each floor often make the most sense.
W.F. Smith has worked in Bucks County homes since 1946. The Smith family still owns and runs the company. Our five owners have more than 140 years of work experience between them, and 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. Parts on repair work come with a one-year warranty.
In Newtown, that long history shows up as extra care, since a crew that has worked on old colonial homes measures the stairs, the attic hatch, and the walls before promising that a system will fit. It also shows up in what we do not recommend. A room over the garage does not need a bigger system, and telling you that saves you from an expensive mistake.
That is the right question to ask first, and we answer it by measuring. Narrow stairs, a low attic opening, and tight headroom in an old Newtown home can limit the size of the unit that fits. Where the path is too tight, the answer is usually a smaller unit, putting it in the basement instead, or going ductless with separate parts instead of one big cabinet.
The office answers Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Outside those hours, an answering service reaches the technician on call. The technician calls you back, tells you the price, and gives you a window for when they will arrive. Newtown sits at the outer edge of our area, so it is worth asking about that window.
It depends on the land more than the house. A ground-based system moves heat through buried pipes, which needs either open yard space for shallow trenches or room to drill deep down. Large lots in Wrightstown and the outer township usually have enough room, while a borough lot often does not. We install ClimateMaster equipment and quote the buried pipes and the indoor unit together as one project.