Sam & Sons Services repairs, replaces and maintains heating and air conditioning systems throughout Northern Virginia and has held a Virginia contractor license since 1999. We work on gas and electric furnaces, heat pumps, boilers, split-system and packaged air conditioners, thermostats, humidifiers and ductwork. Mechanical permits are pulled and processed by our own office where a jurisdiction requires them, equipment changeouts are performed to the Virginia building code, and permitted installations are not paid out in full until the county inspection has passed.
Every heating & cooling service, page by page
Heating and cooling services we provide
| Service | When you need it |
|---|---|
| Air conditioning repair | The system runs but blows warm, short-cycles, trips its breaker, freezes over or leaks water indoors. |
| Air conditioning installation | The condenser and matched indoor coil are replaced together, with the line set, pad, disconnect and drain corrected. |
| Heating and furnace repair | No heat, short cycling, a furnace locking out on a safety, or a blower that will not start. |
| Furnace installation | Sized to the input the house actually needs, with flue, gas connection, condensate and return all reworked to suit. |
| Heat pump repair and installation | Reversing valves, defrost boards, auxiliary heat strips and systems running emergency heat all winter. |
| Boiler repair and installation | Lost system pressure, cold radiators, circulators and zone valves, expansion tanks and flue safety. |
| Thermostat installation | A thermostat that will not respond, misreads the room, or was never wired for the equipment behind it. |
| Humidifiers and indoor air quality | Whole-house humidifiers, filtration and ultraviolet purification fitted to the furnace or air handler. |
| Ductwork repair, sealing and venting | One room that never keeps up, a system that runs constantly, dryer and bath venting that dumps into an attic. |
Air conditioning repair and replacement
A cooling call is a diagnosis before it is anything else. Warm air at the registers narrows quickly to a failed run capacitor, a weak or stopped compressor, a system low on refrigerant because it is leaking, or a control fault upstream of the equipment. Water on the floor is a condensate problem, not a cooling problem, and a coil gripped in ice is almost always airflow.
Replacement enters the conversation for three reasons: the compressor is gone, the refrigerant the system was built for is no longer sensibly obtainable, or the repair costs more than the remaining life is worth. Start at air conditioning repair; air conditioning installation explains why the outdoor unit and the indoor coil are replaced as a matched pair rather than one at a time.
Furnace, heat pump and boiler heating repair
Three different machines heat houses in this region, and they fail in three different ways.
- Gas and electric furnaces
- Igniters, flame sensors, pressure switches, control boards, transformers and blower motors. A furnace that lights and drops out is usually reporting a genuine safety condition rather than a nuisance fault. See heating and furnace repair.
- Heat pumps
- Two faults no air conditioner has: a reversing valve that sticks, and a defrost cycle that stops working. A heat pump stuck on auxiliary strip heat will keep the house warm and quietly run up the meter. See heat pump services.
- Boilers and hydronic heat
- Pressure loss, trapped air at the high points, seized circulators and zone valves, waterlogged expansion tanks, and flue and combustion safety. See boiler repair.
Where a boiler also makes the domestic hot water through an indirect tank, the job crosses into plumbing, which is the same company and the same contract here.
Ductwork, thermostats and indoor air quality
Comfort complaints usually are not equipment complaints. A bedroom over a garage that never keeps up, a system that runs without ever satisfying, or a house that stays dusty and stuffy all point at distribution rather than the furnace.
- Leaking, disconnected or crushed ducts lose conditioned air into attics and crawl spaces before it reaches the room. Ductwork repair and sealing covers sealing, re-hanging, insulating and rebalancing.
- Bath fans and dryers venting into the building put moisture where it causes mold and stained ceilings. Those terminations get taken outside properly.
- A thermostat wired for equipment it does not match will run a heat pump on strip heat or fail to stage a two-stage furnace. See thermostat installation.
- Dry winter air and poor filtration are handled by humidifiers and indoor air quality equipment fitted to the system rather than plugged in room by room.
How an HVAC system is sized before replacement
The number on the old data plate is where a bad replacement starts. Equipment is sized to the house as it is now — its square footage, insulation, windows, orientation, duct capacity and how the space is actually used. An oversized system cools the air fast, never runs long enough to pull the humidity out, and short-cycles itself to an early death.
Duct capacity matters as much as tonnage. Putting a larger system on undersized returns makes noise, not comfort. Where a house has been added to since the system went in, the distribution is checked before anything is ordered.
HVAC permits, Virginia code and mechanical inspection
Diagnostic and repair visits do not require a permit. Equipment changeouts, new gas connections, flue and venting alterations and new duct systems do, in the jurisdictions we work in.
- We pull and process the mechanical permit ourselves. The fee is written into the contract before the job begins, and it is never handed back to the homeowner to sort out.
- The installation is performed to the Virginia building code — combustion air, flue pitch and termination, condensate disposal, clearances, gas sediment traps and disconnects included.
- The county inspects the finished work. On permitted HVAC installations the closing portion of the payment is held until that inspection passes.
- Labor carries a one-year warranty.
Emergency HVAC service, 24 hours a day
The line is answered around the clock on (703) 256-8080. No heat in a hard freeze, a gas smell, a burning odor from a furnace or a system tripping a breaker repeatedly are all treated as urgent. Before we arrive, switch the system off at the thermostat, and switch it off at the breaker if there is any burning smell.
A frozen or burst heating line is a plumbing emergency as well as a heating one. Because the same company holds both trades, one crew handles both rather than two contractors blaming each other — see burst and frozen pipe repair.
One licensed company for HVAC and the trades around it
Sam & Sons Services LLC holds Virginia DPOR class A contractor license #2705070610 and has worked here since 1999. The contract record behind this site runs to thousands of jobs, mostly single-family homes, with condos, townhouses and commercial buildings among them.
Heating and cooling work lands next to other trades constantly: a condensate line is plumbing, a new circuit for an air handler is electrical, a return chase cut through a ceiling is handyman and home repair, and a system moved for a remodeling project is all four at once. We hold every one of those licenses ourselves. The towns we cover are listed on service areas.
What heating and air conditioning work costs
No prices by phone, and none published. Two houses with identical equipment can be completely different installations once the flue, the electrical supply, the duct capacity, the access and the condensate route are looked at. An estimator visits the property, sees the system, and gives you a written price before anything is ordered or started.