HVAC in Cheltenham, PA | Heating & Cooling

A Local Family Shop Since 1946

W.F. Smith is a family-owned heating and cooling company that serves Cheltenham Township, PA. We install, fix, and take care of heating and cooling for homes in every village across the township. Our shop has been on State Road since 1946, just over the Philadelphia line.

Our office tells you the visit fee before we come out, and estimates for new systems are free. We work on air conditioners, gas furnaces, heat pumps, ductless systems, ducts, and indoor air quality.

We do not work on boilers, water heaters, oil systems, or steam systems. That matters more here than almost anywhere else we work, since so many Cheltenham homes still heat that way. We tell you this on the phone, before a technician ever comes out. We can still handle the air conditioning side of a home like that.

Most of our regular systems use Lennox, and most of our ductless systems use Mitsubishi Electric. Much of this township was built before World War Two, full of brick and stone twin homes and single homes made for radiators. A brick or stone wall has no space inside it to hide ducts or a refrigerant line.

Book AC service or a free replacement estimate

Common HVAC Problems in Cheltenham Homes

The calls repeat here. Most start with a home built for one kind of heat that it still has today. Brick and stone walls, plaster inside, and narrow side yards decide what is even possible before we talk about anything else.

What we get called for most:

Heat that works fine, but cooling has nowhere to go.The radiators still do their job. There is no path for ducts, so the job becomes a ductless system or a search for a hidden path somewhere in the walls.
Ducts added in long after the house was built. Too-small ducts squeezed through closets can cool the first floor fine but leave the bedrooms short on air.
An outdoor unit stuck in a shared driveway. The air it blows out bounces off the neighbor’s wall and comes right back into it. The system works harder and cools less on the hottest days.
A finished third floor the system was never built to reach. One thermostat downstairs, one long duct run all the way up, and a room nobody wants to use in August.

Air conditioning

Thick brick and stone change when a Cheltenham home actually needs cooling. These walls soak up the day’s heat and let it go slowly into the evening, so the hottest part of the day inside comes later than the thermometer outside would suggest. We fix, replace, install, and take care of central air conditioners across the whole township. A technician finds the problem and tells you the price, so you approve it before any work starts.
Common calls are an outdoor unit that will not turn on, a frozen coil, a leak in a long refrigerant line, and a backed-up drain line. When we replace a system, measuring the home matters as much as the equipment itself, since a stone twin home with no shade on one side behaves nothing like a wood-frame home the same size.

Heating and furnaces

A real share of Cheltenham homes still heat with a boiler, a steam system, or oil. We do not work on any of those three. We say so on the first phone call, not after a technician is already standing in your basement. We can still handle your cooling, and we can still install a gas furnace if you want to switch. Our heating work covers gas furnace repairs, new installs, replacements, and yearly check-ups. The furnace here usually sits in a basement reached by a narrow set of stairs or a door built into the outside wall. Most no-heat calls come from a problem starting the flame, a broken flame sensor, a bad thermostat, or a dirty filter.

Heat pumps and dual-fuel

A Cheltenham home with a boiler has no furnace to pair a heat pump with, and that changes the whole conversation. A heat pump becomes the only single system that can both heat and cool that home. New heat pumps still work well even when it is well below freezing outside. Where a gas furnace is already there, we can pair the two together, and the system switches to gas once it gets cold enough outside.
In a home still heated by radiators, we more often add a heat pump alongside the existing heat instead of replacing it. The heat pump handles cooling all summer and most of the milder weather in spring and fall, while the radiators stay exactly where they are for the coldest days.
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 mini-splits

Ductless systems do most of the work in this township, since a brick or stone twin home fights a regular ducted system every step of the way. Solid stone and brick have no space inside the walls, so ducts would have to take up space the home cannot spare. A ductless system only needs a small hole in the wall for each indoor unit and one outdoor spot for the main unit. Nothing gets boxed in or lowered, and no closet gets lost.
Mitsubishi Electric is the brand we install most for ductless systems. One indoor unit can handle one tough room, and a system with several indoor units can cool a whole twin home. Many of these homes used window units before switching to ductless.

After-Hours Emergency Service

A brick or stone home holds its temperature for hours, so a problem in Cheltenham often gets noticed late. The call comes in at nine at night for a system that actually quit that afternoon. 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 passes your call to the technician on call, who calls you back.

Nights and Saturdays cost more. Sundays and holidays cost even more than that. The technician tells you the price before leaving the shop. Customers with a maintenance plan get seen first. Our shop sits just over the city line, so this is one of the shorter after-hours drives we make.

Ductwork, air quality, and maintenance

Three other things round out the work here, and in these older homes the first one is the hardest:

Custom ductwork

Fitting ducts into a stone or brick home means building to fit the exact path the home actually has. We build and change the main ducts and return vents to suit each house.

Indoor air quality

Plaster and brick let go of moisture slowly, and older homes hold dust in spots a filter never reaches. Whole-house air purifiers, dehumidifiers, and better filters make a real difference here.

Maintenance

Check-ups matter even more on older ducts and ductless systems, since they run closer to their limits than brand new equipment does. Book a cooling check-up in spring and a heating check-up in fall.

Ask about a maintenance visit before the season turns

Why Cheltenham Is Harder on HVAC Than a Newer Home

Four things about these older homes come up on almost every job here, and none of them is about the equipment itself.

Four things drive the difference:

Solid brick or stone with no space inside. Stone and brick outside walls give a duct or a refrigerant line nowhere to hide. We have to run them through inside walls, stacked closets, or along the outside wall.
Twin homes, shared walls, and shared driveways. A shared wall often means just one side yard, or none at all. We settle on space, clearance, and noise near a neighbor’s window before ordering any equipment.
Heating systems we do not touch. Boilers, steam, and oil heat are all outside what we work on. Here that often means designing the cooling to live alongside heat we are not touching.
Basements reached by a narrow stair or an outside door. Equipment has to fit through the opening the house already has. That quietly rules out some models before efficiency even comes up.

Wet summer air ties it all together. The air here stays sticky from June into September, and brick and stone let go of that moisture slowly. A system that is too big leaves a home cool and damp at the same time.

Cheltenham Neighborhoods We Serve

The township is really a set of villages, and each one has its own version of this job.

We also cover Philadelphia, Jenkintown, Glenside, and more than 20 other communities across Bucks and Montgomery Counties, plus Lambertville, New Jersey.

Cheltenham village (19012).

Compact twin and single homes on modest lots, where planning the refrigerant line path and the outdoor unit spot takes the most work.

Elkins Park (19027).

Bigger, older homes with more floors to cover, with more room for a system with several indoor units.

Wyncote (19095).

Hilly streets and stone homes under big trees that shade the outdoor units and drop leaves and seeds into them.

Melrose Park (19027).

Closely packed older homes near the city line, often with add-on ducts that need rebalancing.

La Mott (19027).

Small, tightly spaced homes where a ductless system is often the only real way to add cooling.

Ashbourne and Laverock (19012, 19038).

A mix of homes on bigger lots, with long duct runs and rooms far from the equipment.

Our Experience in Cheltenham Homes

W.F. Smith has worked in homes along this side of the city line since 1946. 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 Cheltenham job, that long history shows up as knowing where the lines can actually go. We have run refrigerant lines down brick and stone walls without opening up the plaster, cooled finished third floors that no duct could ever reach, and set outdoor units in side yards narrow enough that we had to measure twice. Parts on repair work come with a one-year warranty, and new equipment is registered for its full warranty from the maker.

Why Cheltenham Homeowners Call W.F. Smith

We tell you up front what we do not touch.

If your heat is a boiler or steam, you hear it on the first call, not after a technician is already in your basement.

We settle on a spot for the outdoor unit before ordering equipment.

On a shared driveway or a three-foot side yard, a technician checks the space and sight lines first.

We plan the refrigerant line path around your plaster.

Brick and stone have no space inside the walls, so we figure out where the lines run before anything gets opened up.

You hear the overtime price before the truck leaves.

An after-hours call gets the price over the phone, and customers with a maintenance plan get seen first when several calls come in at once.

HVAC Questions From Cheltenham Homeowners

My home has steam radiators. Can you still add air conditioning?

Yes. We do not work on boilers or steam systems, but your heating and cooling do not have to be the same system. In a radiator-heated Cheltenham home, the only real question is where air or refrigerant lines can travel. Regular central air needs a path straight up through every floor, which usually costs closet space. Most twin and single homes here can get a ductless system instead, with several indoor units and no changes to the walls at all.

Where does the outdoor unit go if I share a driveway with my neighbor?

It has to sit somewhere it can breathe. An outdoor unit needs open space around it and room above it. Air that bounces off a neighbor’s wall gets pulled right back into the unit, which makes it work harder and cool less. On a shared driveway, we look at the backyard first, then a spot set away from the wall. We also check which windows the unit will end up facing.

How do refrigerant lines get run through a solid brick or stone wall?

A brick or stone wall has no space inside it, so the line cannot be hidden inside the wall itself. The usual paths are an inside wall, a stacked closet, a path beside a chimney, or along the outside wall face. An outside run gets a painted cover so the wall still looks right. Each indoor unit needs a small hole through the wall behind it. A technician walks through the house and picks the path first.

Can I cool a finished third floor without touching the rest of the house?

Usually yes. A finished third floor sits right under the roof and takes on heat from every side. It needs its own fix rather than just a bigger version of what is downstairs. One ductless unit serving that floor is the most common answer. It adds cooling right where the heat is and runs on its own thermostat. Where ducts already reach up there, a return vent and a damper can work instead.

Will a ductless unit heat the room as well as it cools it?

Yes, and that surprises people. A cold-climate ductless unit is a heat pump, so it can reverse and heat the same room it cools. New models still work well even when it is well below freezing outside, which covers most of a Pennsylvania winter. In a Cheltenham home still running radiators, the ductless system can carry the milder months while the old heat handles the coldest days. The radiators stay right where they are.

What maintenance matters most on a ductless system?

Keep the indoor filters clean. Each indoor unit has a washable filter that should be rinsed every month during cooling season, since a dirty filter cuts cooling power and can freeze the coil. Have the indoor fan and drain pan cleaned by a professional once a year, since moisture and dust build up a film that no filter catches. Outside, keep two feet of open space around the outdoor unit, clear of the bushes and fallen leaves common on Cheltenham lots.

Older Homes Need More Than a One-Size-Fits-All HVAC Answer

Cheltenham Township has plenty of older housing where mechanical space, duct routes, and room-by-room comfort do not fit modern assumptions. W.F. Smith customers often describe technicians who take time to understand the actual comfort problem and explain the options before work begins, rather than treating every call like an equipment swap

Talk to a Cheltenham HVAC Contractor

Call W.F. Smith to book a repair, set up a check-up, or get a free price on a new system. Our office answers Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. A technician is on call for emergencies outside those hours.