Nearly three in ten homes inside the Town of Warrenton went up before 1960, long before central air, so on an older house the outdoor unit sits wherever an installer found room for it decades later. In the Historic District, where it goes next isn’t only your call. The Town’s 2022 design guidelines call a ground unit on the front of a historic building inappropriate, want rooftop equipment kept out of sight from the street, and ask for refrigerant lines on an outside wall to be painted or covered to match it.
None of that touches a repair. The Town’s permit list says repairs made with replacement parts need no permit, and neither does swapping a heat pump or air conditioning condensing unit for the same type in the same spot. A unit moving somewhere new, or an upgrade that changes the wiring or the ductwork, takes one. In the Historic District even a same-spot swap is outside work on paper: the Town wants a Certificate of Appropriateness application for any exterior change, and its staff can approve an in-kind replacement without the Board.
Townhouses are about a fifth of the homes in town and small apartment and condo buildings about a quarter, and close to four households in ten rent. In a rental the owner usually approves the repair, so tell us who that is when you book, and they’ll see the price before a part goes in.
New Baltimore, on the county side of 20187, is younger: nearly every home is a single-family house and about half went up after 2000. A two-story house from those years often has a second system for the bedrooms, its air handler up in the attic. Close to three owners in ten there heat with electricity, usually a heat pump, and about one in seven burn propane, so plenty of air conditioners out there share a blower with a propane furnace. We work on both halves of that pairing; oil burners we don’t.