HVAC and plumbing in Enfield, CT

Thompsonville sits about seven miles up the road from our shop in Broad Brook, which makes Enfield one of the closest towns we serve. It is also one of the most split, because the mill blocks and the subdivisions need completely different equipment.

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Two Enfields

The mill blocks and the subdivisions are different jobs

Enfield grew twice. Once around the carpet mills and the powder works in the 1800s, and again as suburbs filling in behind them after the war. Which one your house belongs to decides almost everything about what we can install in it.

Built 1830s to early 1900s

The mill villages and the old center

Thompsonville around Pearl Street and the Bigelow Commons blocks, the Hazardville center on Hazard Avenue, and the older housing along Enfield Street.

Heating
Steam or hot water off a cast iron boiler, radiators in every room
Ductwork
None, and adding it costs closets, ceiling height or both
Cooling
Window units, usually, and often only in the bedrooms
Construction
Masonry and plaster, high ceilings, tight lot lines for outdoor units
What we do
Boiler replacement to keep the radiators, ductless for cooling

Built 1950s onward

The postwar and suburban side

Sherwood Manor at the north end, Green Manor over in Scitico, North Thompsonville, and the Presidential Section where every street carries a president's name.

Heating
Forced air or baseboard, with a lot of oil converted to gas along the way
Ductwork
Usually there in the forced air houses, though rarely balanced well
Cooling
Central air, often added years after the house went up
Construction
Frame ranches, capes and colonials, with room to site equipment
What we do
Matched furnace and AC replacement, zoning, smart thermostats

Neighborhoods

Where we work in Enfield

The town has five sections and a lot of named pockets inside them. These are the ones that come up on the phone.

Thompsonville

The town center, and the most urban part of Enfield. Orrin Thompson put the first carpet mill on Freshwater Brook in 1828 and the village grew around it until the last mills closed in 1971. Pearl Street still has rows of old Victorians, and the Bigelow-Sanford complex is now the Bigelow Commons lofts.

Hazardville

Centered on Hazard Avenue between Park Street and North Street, and named for Colonel Augustus Hazard. It grew around the black powder works that ran on Scantic River water power until an explosion ended production in 1913. Powder Hollow Park sits on that ground now.

Scitico

The eastern end of town, where Route 191 comes up from Broad Brook and meets Route 190. Green Manor is part of it, and that is suburban in the fullest sense: winding roads, sidewalks and cul-de-sacs, with equipment that mostly went in at the same time.

Enfield Village

The old center along Enfield Street, with the Town Green and some of the oldest housing in town. Radiator heat is common and so are the constraints that come with a historic streetscape.

Sherwood Manor

The north end, close enough to the Massachusetts line that plenty of people here work in Springfield. Postwar and later housing, mostly ducted, and a lot of it now at the age where the furnace and the condenser both want attention.

The rest of it

The Presidential Section, North Thompsonville, The Laurels, Shaker Pines and the streets around Asnuntuck on Elm Street. Different builders, different decades, and no single answer that fits all of them.

Services

What we do in Enfield

Heating, cooling, air quality, automation and plumbing, permitted under CT LIC HTG #0398155/S1 and dispatched from Broad Brook.

Local conditions

What Enfield does to heating and cooling equipment

Two rivers shape the work here. The Connecticut runs the western boundary and the Scantic cuts across the south of town on its way to meet it, and both of them put groundwater close to the surface in the neighborhoods nearest the banks. That produces damp basements, and damp basements are hard on the two things most likely to be standing in one. Boiler jackets corrode from the outside in, and water heater tanks rust at the base long before the anode rod becomes the story. Where the unit is sitting matters as much as what is on the label.

The mill housing brings its own problem, and it is not a small one. Buildings put up for carpet workers and powder workers were built to be heated by radiators, so there is no duct anywhere in them and no obvious route to add one. Anyone quoting a conventional ducted system in a Pearl Street Victorian or a converted mill block is quoting a construction project alongside the equipment. Ductless does the same job without the demolition, and the radiators can stay exactly where they are.

Then there is fuel. Oil is still common across the older parts of town and out toward the eastern edge, and every delivery in a cold January reopens the same conversation about what a heat pump would cost to run instead. Connecticut is paying homeowners to have that conversation, on terms worth understanding before anyone signs anything.

One practical note. Enfield sits right on the Massachusetts line, which means a lot of households here have one foot in each state. The work still runs under Connecticut licensing and Connecticut incentives, because that is where the house is. If you own property on both sides of the border, we are licensed for both.

Rebates

Energize CT money, and the rule that voids it

Enfield homes are inside Energize CT territory, which is where the heat pump incentives come from. Do not let the proximity to Massachusetts confuse the question. A house in Enfield goes through Energize CT, not Mass Save, even if the owner works in Springfield.

The rule that costs people real money is the eligibility rule. An installation carried out by a contractor who is not in the Energize CT Heat Pump Installer Network does not get a reduced rebate. It gets nothing. The application is rejected on the installer rather than the equipment, and by then the system is on the wall. We are in that network and we file the paperwork as part of the job.

Two more traps before a deposit changes hands. A system can pass on paper and still fail the integrated controls requirement, and the refrigerant matters, so if a quote lists R-410A equipment, ask about it before you sign.

Seven miles away
Our shop is at 17 Wapping Rd in Broad Brook, a short run down Route 5 or I-91 from Thompsonville.
Licensed and certified
CT LIC HTG #0398155/S1, NATE and HBDP certified technicians, Trane Comfort Specialist dealer.
In the network that matters
Energize CT Heat Pump Installer Network membership, which is what keeps a rebate application alive.
A person answers
24 hours a day, 365 days a year. An old boiler quitting in February becomes a frozen pipe job faster than most people expect.

Questions