The things people actually ask us on the phone. Where the honest answer is “call somebody else,” that is what it says.
We work out of our own shop at 387 Butler Ave in Monroe, and cover Monroe, Snohomish, Duvall, Lake Stevens, Everett and the US-2 corridor east to Skykomish — plus most of Snohomish and King County beyond that. If you are not sure whether you are in range, call and ask; we would rather tell you straight than have you guess. Our service area pages go town by town.
The office is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 3:30 PM. Emergency service is available 24/7 on the same number — if the heat goes out at eleven at night in January, call and someone will answer. Routine work gets scheduled during office hours.
Estimates on new equipment and system replacements are free. You can book one online or call. A diagnostic visit on a system that is already broken is a different thing — that is a technician spending time finding the fault — so ask when you call and we will tell you what it costs before we come out.
No. If your system can be repaired and repairing it is the sensible call, we will say so — and if it genuinely is at the end of its life, we will tell you that too, with the reasoning rather than a countdown timer. We are a family business in the town we live in, and the entire model depends on people calling us back.
Mike, the owner and founder, started the company in Monroe in 2014. It is veteran-owned and family-operated — he grew up in the Sky Valley, graduated from Sultan High School, still lives in Sultan, and chairs the Monroe Chamber of Commerce. More about the company.
Mitsubishi Electric, American Standard, RunTru by Trane, and Ameristar. We are a Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Preferred Contractor — the middle of their three tiers, above Diamond Contractor — and an American Standard dealer. Which brand suits your house depends on the job — we will tell you when the cheaper line is genuinely enough.
Yes, and this is close to the ideal climate for one. Modern inverter-driven and cold climate heat pumps produce useful heat well below freezing, and our winters here are mild and wet rather than deeply cold — the design conditions that give heat pumps trouble in Minnesota do not occur in the Snohomish valley. Up the US-2 corridor it gets colder and the equipment selection matters more, which is why we size for your elevation rather than for the county.
It depends mostly on what you heat with now. If your house runs on electric baseboard or wall heaters, a heat pump is close to a straight win: resistance heat gives you about one unit of heat per unit of electricity and a heat pump gives you roughly three, and that difference repeats every cold month for the life of the system. If you have a working gas furnace, the math is closer and depends on your gas and electric rates — and a heat pump also gives you cooling, which a furnace never will. We will walk through both rather than steer you.
A ductless mini-split is a heat pump that puts the indoor unit directly in the room it conditions, so it needs no ductwork at all. That makes it the usual answer for older houses with no ducts, additions, converted garages, and rooms that were never comfortable. One outdoor unit can run several indoor heads, and each one is controlled separately.
Whatever a load calculation says — not what is there now, and not square footage times a rule of thumb. A proper Manual J load calculation accounts for insulation, window area and orientation, air leakage, ceiling height and your actual design temperature. It matters more than people expect: an oversized system short cycles, never runs long enough to even out temperatures or pull humidity, wears its compressor out faster, and costs more to buy. “The old one was a four-ton so we will put in a four-ton” is how an original sizing mistake gets inherited for another twenty years.
Fifteen to twenty years is normal for a maintained system in this climate, and our conditions are gentler than most of the country — no long stretches of extreme heat or deep cold to work against. Two local exceptions. Near the water in Everett, salt air is hard on outdoor coils and shortens the outdoor unit specifically. Up the valley, snow load and drifting mean a unit that sits too low spends part of the winter buried, which is a mounting-height question at install time, not a repair later.
Less than a salesperson in Phoenix would tell you. SEER2 measures cooling efficiency, and our cooling season is short — so the payback on a very high SEER2 number is slow here, because you are buying efficiency for weeks of the year rather than months. HSPF2, the heating figure, is the one that matters in this climate, along with how the system behaves at low temperatures. Federal minimums already set a floor; the money is usually better spent on correct sizing, sealed ducts and a variable speed or two-stage system that runs long and quiet than on chasing the top of the efficiency chart.
They tend to win different jobs. Mitsubishi Electric is the stronger answer for ductless and inverter-driven work — mini splits and multi-splits, additions, houses with no ductwork, and anywhere you want room-by-room control; we are a Diamond Preferred Contractor. American Standard is a straightforward choice for conventional ducted systems, gas furnaces and matched heat pump systems, and RunTru and Ameristar sit below it when the budget is the constraint and the job does not need the top line. We will tell you when the cheaper line is genuinely enough.
For the right house, it is the single best value in residential HVAC here. It is the clear answer if you have no ductwork, if you are heating with electric baseboard or wall heaters, if you have one room that is unusable in August, or if you have an addition or converted garage that the main system was never sized for. It is less compelling if you already have good ducts and a working furnace — then a ducted heat pump usually costs less per ton of capacity. Either way you get cooling, which most older houses here do not have.
If your ductwork runs through a crawlspace or an unheated attic — which most of it does in houses around here — then it is worth having looked at before you spend money on equipment. Leaky, disconnected or uninsulated ducts dump conditioned air into spaces nobody lives in, and the usual symptoms are one room that never keeps up, an air handler that runs constantly, and dust that comes back a week after cleaning. Duct sealing, duct repair and adding proper zoning or dampers frequently do more for comfort than replacing a system that was working.
A conventional tank is the straightforward replacement and the cheaper install; a tankless water heater gives you unlimited hot water, takes up far less space, and typically lasts longer, but it costs more up front and often needs a larger gas line and a new vent. Two local notes. Our incoming water is cold most of the year, which lowers the flow rate a tankless unit can deliver at temperature, so sizing matters more here than the brochure suggests. And if you are converting, the gas line upgrade is part of the real price — ask for it in the quote rather than as a change order.
Yes — through Synchrony and Hearth, with plans running from 6 months to 132 months, including several at 0% APR. There is no prepayment penalty on any of the plans, so paying it off early costs you nothing extra. Real monthly figures for your project size are on the financing page; they are calculated from the actual plan terms rather than estimated.
No. The 30% federal credit worth up to $2,000 — Section 25C — ended for any system placed in service after 31 December 2025, and there was no phase-down or transition rate. "Placed in service" means installed and running, not ordered or contracted. A lot of contractor websites still advertise it; ours does not, and our 2026 incentives guide covers what genuinely remains.
It depends on who sends your electric bill, and we will tell you the honest answer before you commit to anything. If you are a Puget Sound Energy customer, yes — we are a PSE Trade Ally, which is what PSE's certified-installer requirement means as of 2 April 2026, and it disqualifies a lot of contractors. If you are on Snohomish County PUD, their heat pump rebates require the contractor to both install the system and file the application, and that needs a rebate registration Genesis does not hold. We are listed in the PUD's contractor directory, but that listing is a different thing and we will not let it imply otherwise. If that rebate decides your project, ask any contractor whether they can actually file the PUD paperwork — not just whether they are PUD-listed. We would rather say that here than on the phone. Full detail in our incentives guide.
Yes — replacing a furnace, heat pump or air conditioner is mechanical work and needs a permit in every jurisdiction we serve. Which office issues it depends on your address, not just your mailing city. Each incorporated city runs its own — Monroe, Snohomish, Lake Stevens, Everett, Sultan, Gold Bar and Duvall all issue their own mechanical permits — while unincorporated addresses go through Snohomish County PDS or King County, and Index and Skykomish issue their own. Tell us your address and we will tell you which one applies to you.
Look them up on the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries “Verify a Contractor” tool, using the business name or the registration number. Check three things while you are there: that the registration is active, that the bond and liability insurance are current, and that the name on the record matches the name on the quote. Genesis is GENESRH862OP, registered to Genesis Refrigeration & H.V.A.C., LLC. Anyone who will not give you a number to look up has told you something.
A permit, a licensed contractor, and a pressure test that gets inspected before the line is put into service. Gas piping is not homeowner work in any jurisdiction we serve: material, sizing, support spacing, sediment traps and shutoff placement are all code-specified, and an undersized line will starve appliances at the far end even when nothing leaks. We run gas lines for furnaces, water heaters, ranges, fireplaces, generators and outdoor kitchens, and we pull the permit.
Yes — walk-in coolers and freezers, reach-ins, prep tables and restaurant refrigeration, alongside commercial HVAC. Most of our work is residential HVAC, but commercial refrigeration is a real part of the business and it is in the company name for a reason — it is not something most residential HVAC contractors around here do. See commercial refrigeration.
Usually the condenser coil or the door, before it is ever the refrigerant. A condenser packed with kitchen grease and dust cannot reject heat, so the unit runs continuously and still drifts warm. A torn door gasket or a closer that no longer pulls the door shut lets in warm humid air all day and ices the evaporator, which then looks like a refrigerant fault. After that: a failed defrost timer or heater, a blocked drain line, low refrigerant from an actual leak, or simply a big delivery of warm product that needs recovery time. Cooler boxes normally sit in the mid-to-high 30s Fahrenheit.
Moisture getting in and defrost not getting it back out. The usual sources are a door left propped during prep, worn gaskets, or a failed door closer; the usual failure is in the defrost cycle itself — a dead defrost heater, a stuck timer or a defrost termination thermostat that ends the cycle early. A blocked condensate drain does it too, backing water into the box where it refreezes. The counterintuitive part is that a heavily iced evaporator makes the box go warm, because ice blocks the airflow across the coil.
Temperature, and everything that follows from it. A cooler holds in the mid-to-high 30s Fahrenheit; a freezer runs at or below zero. The freezer therefore needs thicker insulated panels, a more aggressive defrost strategy, heated door frames and gaskets so the door does not freeze shut, and usually a floor that is insulated rather than sitting on the slab. It is why a freezer is not simply a cooler turned down, and why converting one to the other is rarely as cheap as it sounds.
Quarterly for a working kitchen, and twice a year at the absolute minimum for lighter-duty equipment. Kitchen air is greasy, and a condenser coil in a restaurant loads up several times faster than the same coil in a retail back room. A service visit should include cleaning condenser and evaporator coils, verifying the defrost cycle actually runs and terminates, checking box temperatures and superheat, clearing drains, and adjusting door hardware and gaskets. Almost every emergency call we take on refrigeration was preventable at one of those visits.
For a system still under manufacturer warranty, usually yes — most equipment warranties require documented annual maintenance, and a denied warranty claim costs far more than the visit. Beyond the paperwork, most of the no-heat calls we take in January are on systems nobody has looked at in years. Our maintenance plans cover it on a schedule so it does not depend on remembering.
A standard one-inch filter every one to three months; a four- or five-inch media cabinet filter every six to twelve. Shorten that if you have pets, allergies, or construction going on nearby. One thing worth knowing: a very high MERV filter in a system not designed for it restricts airflow and can cause the exact overheating and short cycling it was meant to prevent, so higher is not automatically better. If you cannot see light through it, it is overdue.
Once a year at minimum, and twice is better for a heat pump specifically — because unlike a furnace it works year round, in both directions. The usual pattern is heating-season service in the fall and a cooling check in the spring. Most manufacturer warranties require documented annual maintenance, so it is also the paperwork that keeps a warranty claim from being denied.
On a proper visit: filter change, coil inspection and cleaning, condensate drain cleared, refrigerant charge and superheat verified, electrical connections tightened and amp draw checked, blower wheel and motor inspected, thermostat calibration and staging confirmed, and on gas equipment a burner and heat exchanger inspection with a combustion check. What separates a real tune-up from a sales call is whether you get measurements written down. Ask for the numbers.
Three things decide it: age against expected life, what this repair costs relative to a replacement, and whether it is the first repair or the third. A fifteen-to-twenty-year-old system needing an expensive part is usually a replacement conversation; a ten-year-old system needing a $200 part is not. Worth factoring in that a high efficiency furnace or heat pump costs less to run every month you own it, which shifts the arithmetic on a borderline call. Two things force the answer — a cracked heat exchanger, which is a carbon monoxide risk and is never worth repairing around, and older equipment on a discontinued refrigerant, where the refrigerant costs more than the repair. We will tell you which conversation you are actually in.
In this order: control the source, then ventilate, then filter — buying an air purifier while a crawlspace is venting into the house is solving the wrong problem. Practically that means sealing duct and floor leaks, running bath and kitchen fans that actually vent outside, then better filtration at the air handler, and a whole-house air cleaner, HEPA-grade filtration, air scrubber or UV light where there is a specific reason for one. Modern tight houses often need mechanical fresh air on top of all that, which is what an ERV or HRV is for.
An energy recovery ventilator brings measured fresh air into a house and exhausts stale air, passing the two streams through a core so the outgoing air gives most of its heat to the incoming air. An HRV — heat recovery ventilator — does the same for heat only, without transferring moisture. You need one if your house is tight enough that it does not breathe on its own: new construction, a deep energy retrofit, or an older house after new windows and air sealing. Symptoms of needing one are condensation on windows, lingering cooking smells and stuffiness that opening a window fixes.
Usually not for the living space, and often yes for what is under it. Our climate is wet but cool, so indoor relative humidity in a heated house tends to sit in a reasonable range — the moisture problems we actually find here are in crawlspaces and basements, where a vapor barrier, drainage and a dedicated dehumidifier solve more than a whole-house unit ever would. If you are getting condensation on windows and mold in corners in an occupied house, that is more often a ventilation problem than a dehumidification one, and an ERV or better exhaust fans is the cheaper fix. Worth diagnosing rather than buying equipment for.
Yes for scheduling, remote access and seeing what your system is actually doing — with one important caveat if you have a heat pump. Deep setbacks that work beautifully with a gas furnace can backfire on a heat pump: recovering a large temperature drop calls for auxiliary electric resistance heat, which is the most expensive heat in the house, and you can spend more overnight than you saved all day. Use a heat-pump-aware thermostat, keep setbacks shallow, and make sure the staging is configured for your equipment rather than left at the factory default.
Once a year for a typical household, and more often with a large family, a long or convoluted duct run, or a gas dryer. The signal to watch is drying time: when loads start needing two cycles, the vent is restricted. It matters more than it sounds — lint is the ignition source in thousands of house fires a year, and a blocked vent on a gas dryer also backs combustion products into the house.
Two separate things, and it is worth knowing which is which. The manufacturer covers the parts, and that term comes from Mitsubishi Electric or American Standard rather than from us — registration is usually required, and we handle it. The labor warranty is ours: one year on any install, and ten years if you are on one of our maintenance plans. That is the honest reason the plans exist. A part being free does not help much when the labor to fit it is not, and the plan is also what keeps the manufacturer's parts coverage valid, since most warranties require documented annual maintenance. See our maintenance plans.
Check the thermostat fan setting first — if it is on ON rather than AUTO, the blower runs continuously and pushes unheated air between burner cycles, which feels exactly like a broken furnace and is not one. After that, the common causes are a clogged filter that has overheated the furnace into a limit-switch lockout, a failed ignitor or flame sensor so the burners are not lighting, or a blocked flue. Change the filter and try a thermostat reset. If it still blows cold, stop there and call — repeated lockouts are the furnace protecting itself from something.
Short cycling — turning on and off every few minutes without satisfying the thermostat — is almost always restricted airflow or an overheat condition. Start with the filter and make sure supply and return vents are not blocked by furniture or rugs. Beyond that, the causes are a dirty flame sensor, a failing limit switch, a thermostat mounted somewhere it reads the wrong temperature (in sunlight, above a heat source, on an exterior wall), or a furnace that was oversized for the house when it was installed. Short cycling burns out components faster than running does, so it is worth chasing down rather than living with.
In cold weather that is usually correct behavior, not a fault. Heat pumps are designed to run long, low-output cycles rather than the short blasts a gas furnace makes, and a system running steadily while holding your set temperature is doing exactly what it should. It is a problem when it runs constantly and still loses ground, or when the auxiliary or emergency heat light stays on for hours — that points to a refrigerant issue, an iced outdoor coil, a defrost failure, or a thermostat set back so aggressively that the system gives up and calls for backup heat.
A layer of frost on the outdoor coil in winter is normal, and the unit clears it on its own with a defrost cycle every so often, usually with a whoosh and some steam. What is not normal is solid ice that never clears, ice encasing the whole unit or the fan blades, or a coil that is frozen in cooling season. Those mean a defrost control failure, a blocked drain, restricted airflow or low refrigerant. Do not chip at the ice — you will puncture the coil, which turns a repair into a replacement. Turn the system off and call.
Four things, in this order. Thermostat set to COOL with the setpoint actually below room temperature. The air filter, because a clogged one restricts airflow enough to freeze the indoor coil solid. The breaker, since indoor and outdoor units are often on separate ones and only the outdoor one has tripped. Then go outside and confirm the outdoor unit is actually running and its coil is not blocked by grass clippings or blackberry. If air is moving but it is not cold, or if you find ice on the refrigerant lines, switch to fan-only to let it thaw and call — running a system with a frozen coil damages the compressor.
It is a diagnostic code, and the key to reading it is printed on a label inside the furnace door — count the flashes, or the pattern of long and short, and look it up on that label. It is worth doing before you call, because the code tells us what to bring. Do not treat a code as a repair instruction, though: several different faults share a flash pattern on most equipment, and “pressure switch open” can mean anything from a blocked intake to a cracked heat exchanger, which is a safety issue rather than an inconvenience.
Questions about a specific town — permits, which utility you are on, what the rebate situation actually is at your address — are answered on that town’s own page under service areas. Anything else, call us at (425) 261-9095 or send us a note. We will tell you where you stand even if the answer sends you somewhere else.
Repairs, maintenance, or a new-system walkthrough — schedule in a few taps or give us a call.