HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical in Keene, NH

A valley city in the Monadnock Region

Keene sits on the floor of the Ashuelot River valley in the far southwestern corner of New Hampshire, the seat of Cheshire County and the largest city in the Monadnock Region, with Mount Monadnock rising to the east above a landscape of hills that ring the town on nearly every side. The downtown is built around one of the widest main streets in the country, lined with nineteenth-century brick blocks, and the neighborhoods that spread out from Central Square and around Keene State College run from old Victorians to postwar ranches to newer homes climbing the surrounding slopes. Keeping a home comfortable and dry in a place like this means working with the cold that settles into the valley, the granite under your feet, and the river that runs through the middle of it, and it starts with the winter this city is built around.

A valley that traps the cold

Keene is known for being one of the colder spots in southern New Hampshire, and the reason is the shape of the land. On clear, still winter nights the cold air drains off the surrounding hills and pools on the valley floor, so the low ground in and around the city routinely reads colder than the towns up on the ridges. That cold-air pooling is exactly the condition that finds every weak point in an undersized or aging heating system, and it does it on the coldest night of the year, when a furnace or boiler that quits is not an inconvenience but a frozen-pipe emergency. We size heating to a real load calculation for the house rather than a rule of thumb, service furnaces, boilers, and oil-fired systems before the season instead of during the first hard freeze, and when a system reaches the end of its life we replace it with equipment matched to a Keene winter. Heat that holds through the coldest week is the whole point of owning the system.

Cold-climate heat pumps and a humid summer

Modern cold-climate heat pumps hold their efficiency well below zero now, which makes them a genuine option even on the valley floor, and New Hampshire's rebates have pushed a lot of homes in this direction. Paired with backup heat for the hardest cold snaps, one system heats, cools, and dehumidifies the whole house, and for the many older Keene homes that were built with no ductwork at all, ductless mini-splits deliver all three without tearing plaster walls apart. Summer here is short but humid, and humidity is where sizing matters most. An oversized air conditioner cools the air fast and then shuts off before it pulls the moisture out, leaving a house that feels cool and clammy and a basement that turns musty. We size to the actual load and set the dehumidification up properly so the house is dry as well as cool.

Bedrock wells and what comes out of the granite

The city itself runs on municipal water drawn from surface reservoirs up in the hills, but step outside the service area into the rural stretches of Cheshire County and most homes are on private wells drilled into New Hampshire granite. That bedrock is the source of the state's well-water problems: arsenic and uranium leach out of the granite across southwestern New Hampshire at levels you cannot see, taste, or smell, and radon gas dissolves into the water and off-gasses into the house every time a tap runs. Iron and manganese stain fixtures and laundry, and hard water scales the inside of a water heater and shortens its life. None of it shows up until you test for it, so we test the well for what is actually present rather than guessing, then build the treatment the results call for - arsenic and uranium removal, radon aeration, filtration for iron, and softening for hardness - so the water is safe to drink and your plumbing lasts the years it should.

The Ashuelot River and a wet basement

The river that gives the valley its shape also floods it. The Ashuelot runs right through the middle of Keene, and the low-lying neighborhoods along it have a long history with high water - the October 2005 flood tore through the Ashuelot watershed and did severe damage across the region, and the valley floor has flooded repeatedly before that. Even short of a true flood, homes on the low ground sit over a high water table and fight damp basements and groundwater pressing against the foundation through every wet spring. A sump pump is the front line, and a sump with no backup fails on its one big test, because the water peaks during the same storm that knocks the power out. We install sump systems sized for real storm volume, add battery or generator backup so they keep running when the grid does not, and address the grading and drainage that let water reach the foundation in the first place.

Old houses, old panels, and modern loads

Downtown Keene and the streets around Keene State are full of homes built long before central air, electric ranges, heat pumps, and car chargers existed. Those houses often still run on undersized services, knob-and-tube or cloth-wrapped wiring, and fuse boxes that were never meant to carry a modern home's load, and that is both a safety issue and a hard ceiling on what you can add. We upgrade services to a safe 200-amp panel, replace outdated wiring with routing that protects plaster, trim, and finishes, and add the circuits a modern home needs - a heat-pump circuit, a properly installed EV charger, the kitchen and bath loads an old panel cannot carry - all done to code and inspected.

Power that stays on through an ice storm

Southwestern New Hampshire is ice-storm country, and the December 2008 storm is the one people here still measure against - it coated the Monadnock Region in ice, brought down trees and lines, and left parts of the area without power for a week or more. Outages here are measured in days, not minutes, and when the power goes so does the heat, the well pump, and the sump. A whole-home standby generator keeps all of it running through a multi-day outage, starting on its own when the utility drops and shutting down when it returns. In a valley that both freezes hard and floods, that is not a luxury; it is what keeps the pipes from bursting and the basement from filling during the exact storm that cut your power.

One call instead of five

The right-sized heating, the heat pump, the well treatment, the sump and its backup, the panel upgrade, and the generator are one licensed, veteran-owned team from our New Hampshire branch, not five contractors to line up and coordinate. Same-day service where we can, permits pulled and inspections handled, and a lifetime workmanship guarantee behind every bit of it.

What we get called for in Keene

The work that comes up most around here. Same team, same guarantee, whichever one you need.

• Water Treatment - Cleaner, safer water for your whole home.
• Generator Install - Keep your home powered no matter what.
• Boiler Repair - Restore heat fast with reliable service.
• Heat Pumps - Repair or replace modern heat pumps.
• Furnace Repair - Restore heat fast with reliable service.
• Panel Upgrades - Boost home power and improve safety.
• Oil-to-Gas Conversion - Upgrade your home to use modern, efficient fuel.
• Water Heaters - Repair or replace tank and tankless units.

We also serve near Keene

Same team, same guarantee, a short drive away. Find your town for the local details.

• Jaffrey, NH
• Hancock, NH
• Peterborough, NH
• Antrim, NH
• Rindge, NH
• Greenfield, NH