Commercial HVAC Contractor

What commercial HVAC covers

Light commercial buildings run on a short list of equipment, and we service all of it. Packaged rooftop units carry most of the heating and cooling load in retail, restaurant and office space. Split systems and ductless heads handle server rooms, back offices and additions. Gas unit heaters and infrared tubes heat shops and warehouses. Make-up air units, exhaust fans and kitchen hoods keep the air in the building balanced and the health inspector satisfied.

Behind all of it sit the gas piping, the electrical service and the controls, which is where a commercial job usually gets complicated. One licensed team handles every part of that here, so a rooftop unit that needs a larger gas line and a new three-phase disconnect is one contract and one crew. Our two most requested commercial services have their own pages: rooftop unit replacement and rooftop unit repair.

Light commercial is a different job than residential

The equipment looks familiar, but the conditions are not. Commercial units run on 208 or 460 volt three-phase power. They sit on roofs that need ladders, lifts or cranes to reach, and fall-protection planning before anyone goes up. Occupancy loads swing with the business day, so a unit that is fine at nine in the morning is undersized by noon in a full restaurant. Code adds ventilation requirements, economizers, duct smoke detectors and energy standards that never come up in a house.

The scheduling is different too. A business cannot shut down for a changeout the way a homeowner can take a day off, so we plan around your open hours, sequence multi-unit work so the building never loses more than one zone, and put the crane on the roof before your parking lot fills. We tell you what the job will disrupt and when, in writing, before it starts.

The buildings we work in

Most of our commercial work is in the buildings that make up a main street or a strip plaza: restaurants and cafes, retail, professional offices, dental and medical practices, fitness studios, churches and daycares, auto shops and small warehouses. We also service multi-family buildings, where through-the-wall packaged units and central systems fail in their own particular ways.

Each of those uses puts a different load on the equipment. Kitchen exhaust coats the coil of the rooftop unit downwind of it. A gym runs high humidity all day. A dental office needs tight temperature control and ventilation for its equipment. We size and maintain against how the space is actually used, not against how it was built.

Where we work as a commercial HVAC contractor

We are licensed and running commercial work in three states, out of branches that are actually in the markets they serve rather than dispatching across a region.

• Greater Manchester and the Merrimack Valley, NH. Manchester, Bedford, Nashua, Merrimack, Milford, Goffstown, Hooksett, Concord, Derry, Londonderry and Salem. Storefronts and restaurants on the main streets, offices and light industrial in the business parks, and a lot of converted mill space that was never designed around the equipment now keeping it conditioned.
• The Jersey Shore and Ocean County, NJ. Brick, Toms River, Point Pleasant, Lakewood, Manasquan, Wall and Freehold. Retail, medical and hospitality, much of it seasonal, much of it close enough to the water that coil corrosion decides how long a rooftop unit lasts.
• North Jersey. Sparta, Newton, Hackettstown, Morristown, Parsippany and the surrounding Sussex and Morris County business districts.
• Southern Maine. Sanford, Biddeford, Saco, Wells, Kittery and York.

If your building is near those and you are not sure whether we cover it, ask. We would rather tell you no than send someone two hours for a service call.

What to ask a commercial HVAC contractor before you hire one

Commercial work goes wrong in ways that do not show up for a season, so the questions worth asking are not the ones most people ask.

• Who does the electrical and the gas? Most mechanical contractors subcontract one or both. That means a second company, a second schedule, and an argument about scope when something does not line up. We hold the licences for all three trades, which is why a rooftop changeout here is one crew and one point of responsibility.
• Who pulls the permits and meets the inspector? It should be them, not you.
• Can they work when you are closed? Replacing a unit over a live restaurant at 11am is not a plan. Off-hours and overnight work should be normal, not an exception that costs extra to arrange.
• Will they give you a written condition report on every unit? Not a verbal "it's getting old". Age, refrigerant, compressor condition and a replace-by year you can put in a budget.
• What is the response commitment when it fails in August? Get it in writing before you need it.

Replacement, repair and maintenance from one team

Emergency repair is where most commercial relationships start. A no-heat call on the coldest morning of the year, or a no-cool call in the middle of a heat wave with a full dining room. We diagnose on the roof, give you the findings with photos, and price the repair in writing before the work starts. When a repair is not worth making, we say so and show you the replacement number beside it.

Maintenance is where the relationship earns its keep. Spring and fall visits on every unit, filters and belts on a schedule, coils cleaned, heat exchangers inspected, economizers tested. For buildings with several units we keep an equipment list with model, serial, filter sizes and belt numbers on file so the truck arrives stocked. The rest of your building runs through the same crew: HVAC maintenance, thermostats and controls, duct cleaning, gas piping, electrical service upgrades and standby generators for the businesses that cannot afford to go dark.

Planning capital replacements instead of emergencies

Every rooftop unit has a date on it, and the refrigerant transition moved a lot of those dates closer. Equipment built for R-410A is now being repaired with a refrigerant that is no longer manufactured, so a compressor failure on a twelve-year-old unit costs more every season and buys less time. Owners who know the age, refrigerant and repair history of every unit on the roof can decide when to replace on their own schedule. Owners who do not find out on the worst day of the year.

We build that asset list on the first maintenance visit and keep it current. From there we lay out which units to replace this year, which to carry, and where utility incentives for higher-efficiency or heat pump equipment change the order. A phased plan with the crane booked in the shoulder season costs less and disrupts less than the same work done as an emergency in July.

Why business owners here call High Ground

We have more than 260 packaged and rooftop units in our service records across New Hampshire, New Jersey and southern Maine, and our technicians have been on commercial roofs for spring and fall maintenance for years. We know how this climate treats a rooftop unit, and how a coastal site treats it worse.

One licensed team does the whole job: HVAC, electrical and gas, with no second contractor to coordinate and nobody blaming the other trade. Every job carries our Lifetime Workmanship Guarantee. High Ground is veteran-owned, the mission is giving the trades a good home, and the technician on your roof intends to be the one who knows your building next year too.

Related Heating & Cooling services

• Rooftop Unit Replacement
• Rooftop Unit Repair
• HVAC Maintenance
• Thermostats
• Duct Cleaning
• Air Quality

Where we provide Commercial HVAC Contractor

Same crew, same guarantee, priced the same way in every town we cover. Pick yours for the local conditions we work in, the branch that runs the call, and how to book.