Effective Air

I’ve been a customer of Effective Air since 1986, except for 12 years when I lived in another state or in an apartment. Their service, expertise, and courtesy have been consistently excellent.
Full disclosure: Effective Air’s owner Jon Smith is my first cousin. I have a large extended family in this area, and there are other tradespeople in the family whom I would not hire again because of their work.
From 1986 to 2000 I owned a brick ranch in Glenview with central air and gravity heat (which is so wonderful). EA performed regular maintenance on our furnace and I think made one repair to a ruptured pipe in the slab.
In 2000 I moved to a townhouse with another good furnace and some unexpected problems. The second floor, including my bedroom, was roasting in hot weather, in bed I could feel heat radiating from the ceiling. EA recommended blown-​in attic insulation and a thermostat-​controlled attic fan, and the difference in comfort was astounding, plus my utility bills dropped. The house had forced-​air heat, which is so dry in the winter, and I had EA install a humidifier on the furnace, which also made a big difference in comfort.
From 2003 to 2015 I lived out of state or in apartments. In March 2015 I moved into a rented house in Evanston, and today I once again hired Effective Air. My husband and I are self-​employed, so our home is our workplace, so comfort is necessary so we can keep working. Last night the house was at 84 degrees and there was thick ice on the refrigerant pipes, and we had heard chunks of ice falling inside the furnace. Technician Scott Belford was a pleasure to deal with, punctual, extremely knowledgeable, courteous and efficient. We had lots of questions, which Scott answered with a minimum of jargon, and he showed us how to do regular maintenance like replacing the furnace filter, which had been incorrectly inserted. Our landlord had said the system couldn’t be low on refrigerant, and ice often means airflow problems, so Scott checked out airflow first, but adding refrigerant was the answer, and once he added it we had AC once again, and he did his best to get us a deal on refrigerant.
If you’re looking for quality work done by courteous, professional experts in the field, I highly recommend Effective Air.

Effective Air (Adrian and Chris) was excellent when they did the duct cleaning for our house. They were extremely thorough with their job and did a great job for the price.
They were also incredibly respectful of our house rules (shoe-​free house) and cleaned up the areas they worked in.

Kudos to John at Effective Air who called me when he read my Unilocal review (right under this one) to figure out what went wrong with that crazy high bid. He explains the answer in his response posted below.

We have used EA for over ten years. We have a very old boiler heating system, an attic AC unit and and a new forced air furnace/​ac system located in the basement in a new part of the house. EA services all of them and does so with professional skill, friendly service people and timely service.
I have only had one problem with them — and that was after the new section of the house was added and some of the boiler pipes had been rerouted or capped. They came out three times at no extra charge to get it right. Problem solved.
We had them replace an old AC unit, deal with air clogs in the hot water pipes, fix the boiler after a system shutdown and we have EA do maintainence on all systems in the spring and fall. We have recommended them to friends and family and will do so again.

Carlos was very thorough in both his work and communication. He solved on on-​going problem with our heating system which hadn’t been solved by others. Diagnosed the problem, the part was dispatched and the problem resolved.

We used Effective Air a few times to service the furnaces at our house in Glenview. They are competent, but not trustworthy. Do yourself a favor and find someone honest.

Effective Air is the absolute worst group of lying, unprofessional people I have ever dealt with. In addition to telling us our furnaces were both broken and needing to be replaced, (Which turned out to be not true) they attempted to charge us close to $ 1,000 for a new thermostat. When a different company came to re-​check the furnaces and told us they were just fine and the cost of the exact same thermostat installed would be $ 245 I called effective Air and was told too bad. I would never use them again and I tell everyone I can how deceitful they are and I will continue to do so.

The guys were great when I had them out to clean air ducts. Some unusual circumstances came up and they totally rolled with the punches. They were extremely professional and friendly. They offered to cover their shoes and were so concerned about making a mess in the house, even when I told them it was no big deal. They didn’t even want to take a tip when I offered it. And the best part was there was no upselling — they did the job I asked and while they mentioned they also do furnace and water heater work they didn’t not press the issue. Highly recommended!