Rowhouses built for factory and brewery workers
Fairmount is named for the hill where William Penn meant to build his manor house and where the Philadelphia Museum of Art stands today, and Fairmount Avenue itself began as a road called Hickory Lane. The neighborhood filled in during the 19th century. The Baldwin Locomotive Works, the country’s largest maker of locomotives, drove building on the blocks south of Fairmount Avenue from the 1840s, and large breweries arrived later in the century. Most of the homes are modest rowhouses from the second half of the 1800s, built for the people who worked in those shops, with bigger houses for managers and brewery owners scattered among them.
Boiler and radiator repair in Fairmount
Central heat has a long history on this street grid. When Eastern State Penitentiary opened on Fairmount Avenue in 1829, its cells were warmed by hot water run through pipes along one wall, an arrangement that was advanced for its time. Rowhouses from the decades that followed were commonly built around a basement boiler feeding cast-iron radiators, and that layout is still typical of old houses. When a boiler quits on a cold night, the cause is usually a single worn part rather than the boiler as a whole. We troubleshoot first, tell you what failed and give you the price before any work starts, and no-heat calls are answered around the clock.
Air conditioning for Fairmount rowhouses
Houses built for factory workers in the 1800s had no space set aside for ducts, and with a neighbor on each side there is little room to add them. Where a house has an attic, an air handler up there can cool the top floor through short duct runs, with the outdoor unit in the rear yard or on the flat back roof. Houses already renovated with ductwork can take central air through the same ducts as the furnace. In the larger houses with three or four floors, the top floor gains the most heat in summer, so it often gets a zone of its own.
Furnace and boiler replacement and maintenance in Fairmount
When an old boiler or furnace reaches the end, a new high-efficiency unit often vents through a plastic pipe in the wall rather than the old chimney, so the venting is part of the plan from the start. You see the replacement price next to the repair price, and new systems can often go in the next day. Fairmount’s gas comes through PGW, which the city owns, so PGW’s rebate programs are worth checking before you buy a high-efficiency furnace or boiler. Our $54 Seasonal Maintenance visit is the simplest way to catch a weak part before it fails in January or July. Our shop in Bala Cynwyd is about six miles from Fairmount Avenue by the Schuylkill Expressway, so the Art Museum area is close enough for same-day repairs when the schedule allows.