J L Cantrell | Lake Arrowhead | Heating

Serving Lake Arrowhead and surrouding areas for over 40 years

My name is Jeff Cantrell, son of Bill Cantrell, (founder of Cantrell's Heating and no longer owned by our family), and I am Lake Arrowheads most experienced Heating and Air Conditioining contractor with over 40 years experience serving the area.

My company offers the most knowledgeable service and repair for all types of heaters, including wall heaters, floor furnaces, forced air furnaces, ductless split systems (mini splits) as well as duct repairs, maintenance, filter replacement and so on. We also offer air conditioning installations, complete or added to an existing system. We have a full line of equipment from Trane as Trane Comfort Specialists, Day & Night as well as Mitsubishi ductless and steam humidifiers from Aprilaire. No one understands the design challenges of the mountain homes better than us.

With the need of having air conditioning added to homes that were never designed to have it, there are many key elements that must be addressed. The goal is to have balanced comfort no matter if heating or cooling your home.

There are many options for heating & air conditioning a house in the moutain communities. Please read the Challenge of Adding AC below for more information.

Today we have ductless and ducted Mitsubishi systems, often known as Mini splits. They offer a wide range of applications to help heat or cool hard to access areas. With Inverter techonolgy they work very well in very low tempuratures. We also use the very best of materials available.

On the right is a picture of a job on C Lane in Lake Arrowhead we did. Notice the vinyl lineset cover used that comes in white, that compared to metal will not rust, or have the paint peal off. We also went from above the window upstairs and over to the edge of the house next to the trim board for better aesthetics.

Above are the outdoor portions or heat pumps used for two bedrooms upstairs that were unaccessible by conventional means. For the lower level a new Day & Night High efficiency 95% AFUE furnace was installed to replace the old floor furnace.

The challenge of adding AC to Mtn homes

Growing up in the area I have seen the increasing temperatures decade after decade and with all the trees being removed in the early to mid 2000's, having air conditioning for the most part has become a necessity. The problem is most homes built were designed around heating only. When it comes to cooling a home the design is the complete opposite to cooling a home. Heating requires more heat to the lower levels and less as you rise to upper stories since heat typically rises.

With Air conditioning it is the opposite with more air flow needed on the upper levels and less down below. This becomes the challenge since most ductwork to the upper floors is undersized and inadequate for proper cooling. If you have an A Frame style living area it becomes more difficult. So in the end the question is how do I design a system to properly heat and cool a home? How can I get larger ducts to my upper levels. This can be a definite issue.

As I have talked about proper sizing of equipment and ducting in this site it becomes even more critical in the higher elevations. Unfortunately we have been called to to various homes to try and fix the problems of newly installed air conditioning systems by local contractors.

One project on Bernina Dr in Lake Arrowhead had a 5 ton system installed on a three story house. The ducting was inadequate or the system over sized. As the owner tried to use the system it "iced up". After performing load calcualtions we found that a 3 ton would have been adequate with proper ducting to the top level. The end result was the owner was out about $12K and the only fix was to remove it and start over. The house was later sold and recently installed a new Mitsubishi sytem for his master suite and ajacent bedroom on the top level and corrected some other issues with his main system and tankless hot water heater venting.

This picture shows the only way to cool a loft area in an A frame . The top picture, forgive the shadowing, show two large 12 x 12 floor registers on the loft floor. This was the only option. Fed by two sheet metal ducts in back to back closets coming up from the furnace area. Hard pipe with a non fiberglass wrap was used to save closet space. Precision cutting saved the shelf and pole.

A Honeywell motorized damper was wired into the system so when the call for heating comes on the dampers close this way the unneeded heat goes to the lower levels. There are a few other aspects to this but we chose not sure share all our designs.