Bellows has been installing and repairing heating and cooling systems across Marin since 1984. Our Novato shop is about fifteen minutes up the 101 from downtown San Rafael, and someone answers the phone at any hour.
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Repair, replacement and installation across San Rafael, Terra Linda, Santa Venetia, Peacock Gap, Gerstle Park, Dominican, Marinwood and Lucas Valley.
Heat pumps handle heating and cooling from one system. MCE still rebates them for San Rafael homeowners. The federal 25C credit does not, having expired at the end of 2025.
Want to upgrade to a new air conditioner? Think your AC needs to be replaced? Contact our HVAC contractors today.
At Bellows Plumbing, Heating & Air, we can provide repairs and maintenance for any type of air conditioner.
New ductwork for additions, retrofits and homes where the original runs were never sized correctly. Common in older houses where ducting was added long after the house was built.
Ductless mini splits heat and cool rooms that ducted systems never reached well, including additions, converted garages and ADUs. As a Mitsubishi Elite Dealer we stock the parts, so most repairs finish on the first visit.
Forced air is what most homes in our service area run. We install, repair and balance these systems, and we check the ductwork before quoting a replacement rather than after.
Get reliable warmth with our Gas Furnace installation, maintenance, and repair for efficient, safe heating.
Round the clock service across San Rafael and Marin, seven days a week, out of our Novato shop.
Most people who call us in San Rafael are not shopping around. Something has stopped working, usually a furnace that will not light on the first genuinely cold morning in October, or an air conditioner that picked a September heat spell to quit.
We run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, out of the Novato shop on Hamilton Drive. That covers San Rafael proper along with Terra Linda, Santa Venetia, Peacock Gap, Gerstle Park, Dominican, Marinwood and Lucas Valley.
A diagnostic visit costs $189. A licensed technician inspects the system and gives you a written explanation of what is wrong and what the repair will cost, before anyone starts work. Go ahead with the repair that day and the diagnostic fee comes off the invoice. Members of our maintenance plan pay nothing for the visit.
We put that number on the page so you do not have to ask for it.
The median San Rafael home was built in 1968, and 71 percent of the housing stock went up in 1979 or earlier, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2020 to 2024. That one number explains most of what we find when we open a mechanical closet here.
Original equipment from that era is long gone. What is usually there instead is the second or third system dropped into ductwork nobody has touched since the house was framed. Sixty year old flexible duct sags and separates at the boots, so a good share of what the system produces ends up heating the crawlspace. You feel it as equipment that runs all day without quite getting there. Houses built before central air was normal were ducted for heat alone, and when cooling is added later the return path is too small for the blower it now feeds.
We still find wall furnaces and floor furnaces in service. San Rafael still permits them, which tells you how common they are. The other recurring problem is a system sized for a house that no longer exists, after additions, converted garages and opened up kitchens changed the load.
Worth knowing: about a third of San Rafael households already heat with electricity rather than gas, which is high for Marin. If yours is one of them, your replacement options look different from your neighbour’s.
Multiply the age of the system in years by the cost of the proposed repair. Over $5,000, replace it. Under $5,000, repair it. A $400 repair on a six year old furnace comes to $2,400, so you fix it. The same repair on a sixteen year old furnace comes to $6,400, and the money is better spent on a replacement.
Treat it as a starting point rather than a verdict. Two blind spots come up regularly in San Rafael. If the system still runs R-22, repairing a leak means buying a refrigerant that is no longer manufactured, and supply overrides the arithmetic. And if the ducts are the real problem, a new condenser will not solve it. We would rather say so than sell you equipment that disappoints you for fifteen years.
Two visits a year, priority scheduling, and no diagnostic fee when something goes wrong.
Book online or by phone, any hour.
On time, with the common failure parts already on the van.
Replacement estimates are free. Repairs carry the $189 diagnostic, credited against the work if you go ahead that day.
Our installers are factory trained on the systems we fit, and we are a Lennox and Mitsubishi elite dealer.
Bellows is a family company, started in 1984 and now more than 200 people across four Bay Area counties. We hold California contractor license 483881, C20 for HVAC, C36 for plumbing and C10 for electrical.
The technician who arrives at your house in San Rafael works out of Novato. They carry the common failure parts for the systems we install, so a good share of repairs finish on the first visit. They will show you what they found and quote the work before starting it. If it cannot be fixed, they will say so.
Recent Google reviews on the Novato listing name them. Cody came out to evaluate one household’s HVAC system and “explained everything that he was doing and answered our questions”. Brian walked a couple through their first air conditioner. Dan was called “warm, friendly, accommodating to my requests and knowledgeable”.
Most of the money that was available for heat pumps two years ago has gone. A contractor still leading with large rebate figures is quoting a program that has closed.
Electrify Marin is closed. Marin County’s own website says the program “is now closed and will not accept new applications,” after roughly $1.4 million in rebates. Closed rather than paused.
The federal 25C tax credit has expired. Equipment had to be placed in service on or before 31 December 2025, so nothing installed in 2026 qualifies.
BayREN’s heat pump rebates ended in April 2024. TECH Clean California and HEEHRA are fully reserved, with single family reservations closed since November 2025 and HEEHRA income verification closed since February 2026. A waitlist exists. Funding behind it does not.
MCE is what remains, and it is worth having. San Rafael is one of MCE’s twelve Marin member communities. MCE currently offers up to $675 toward a heat pump water heater, and up to $400 per 500 square feet toward a heat pump heating and cooling system, so about $1,200 on a 1,500 square foot house.
Two conditions catch people out. You have to own and have lived in a single family detached home for at least 12 months, and use a licensed participating contractor. Then there is the timing rule: if you already have solar, battery storage or EV charging it must have been installed at least 12 months ago, and you cannot install any of those for 12 months after the heat pump goes in.
That matters more in Marin than most places, because so many houses here have solar and so many owners are planning a battery next. Get the sequence wrong and the rebate goes away. Ask us before you book anything else. Amounts and eligibility change, so we check MCE’s current terms before we quote.
More San Rafael homeowners search for heat pump work than for any other heating or cooling job, by a wide margin. That matches what we install.
A heat pump replaces the furnace and the air conditioner with a single system that does both. Marin’s climate suits it, because our winters rarely ask the equipment to work hard. It also takes gas out of your space heating, if that is a direction you want to move in.
We install Mitsubishi, Lennox and Friedrich systems in Marin homes. A whole home system generally starts around $14,000 and runs past $18,000 installed, before electrical work, lineset and permits. Where a house lands in that range depends on its size, whether the existing ducts can be reused, and how much capacity is left in the panel. We have written up the four systems we fit most often in our guide to choosing a heat pump in San Rafael and Marin County.
We also install and replace gas furnaces, air conditioners and ductless mini splits.
Yes, though not with conventional ducts. This comes up constantly in Terra Linda. San Rafael’s General Plan counts 900 Eichler homes there, and more than 1,700 across Terra Linda, Lucas Valley and Marinwood.
Eichlers were built post and beam on a concrete slab with radiant heating cast into it, under a flat or very low pitched roof. No attic, no roof cavity, nowhere to run a duct. So when the original radiant loop fails, it is not a like for like replacement. Either the slab loop gets repaired, or the house gets a distribution system it was never built with. In practice that means ductless mini splits, or ducts routed through furred down soffits and closets. Boxing ducts across the roof also works, and most Eichler owners hate how it looks.
One thing in your favour: California’s energy code exempts homes with no air distribution ducts from duct leakage testing, and homes with under 40 feet of duct as well.
Yes, for a furnace, an air conditioner or a heat pump. Only portable equipment is exempt. A changeout that keeps the equipment in the same location goes through the city’s Minor Permits path, which needs no plan review. Under the fee schedule effective 1 July 2026 that permit costs $141. Applications go through the city’s online portal, which replaced paper filing in February 2026, and a minor permit for a furnace stays valid for 180 days rather than two years.
Two things to plan around. A new air conditioner that is not replacing an existing unit needs a site plan showing the unit’s location, its distance from the property line and from your neighbours’ windows, and its decibel rating, and that one is reviewed before it is issued. Separately, San Rafael sits in California Building Climate Zone 2, so a heat pump or AC changeout here triggers refrigerant charge verification by an independent rater. Plenty of coastal California cities do not require it. We build it into the quote rather than adding it later, and we pull the permit as part of the job.
No. San Rafael adopted an all electric requirement for new construction in December 2022 and then repealed it, after the Ninth Circuit ruled against Berkeley’s ordinance. The city says so on its own website. In an existing San Rafael home you can replace a gas furnace with a gas furnace.
The reach code that does exist applies to remodels rather than equipment swaps. Alter more than 500 square feet of a home permitted before 2011 and the city asks you to reach an efficiency target from a menu of measures. For a pre 1978 house a heat pump alone clears it comfortably. Worth knowing before a larger project, but it will not force your hand on a furnace.
Heating, cooling, plumbing and electrical
from our Novato shop on Hamilton Drive.
Here are answers to some of the top questions about our services:
Yes. A like for like changeout that stays in the same location uses the city’s Minor Permits path and needs no plan review. The fee is $141 under the schedule effective 1 July 2026. Bellows pulls the permit as part of the job.
MCE offers up to $675 for a heat pump water heater and up to $400 per 500 square feet for a heat pump heating and cooling system. Electrify Marin has closed, BayREN’s heat pump rebates ended in 2024, TECH and HEEHRA are fully reserved, and the federal 25C credit expired for anything placed in service after 31 December 2025.
No. The city adopted an all electric requirement for new construction in December 2022 and repealed it after the Ninth Circuit ruling against Berkeley. You can replace a gas furnace with a gas furnace in an existing home.
Yes, though not with conventional ductwork. Eichlers have flat or low pitched roofs with no attic and radiant heat cast into a slab, so there is nowhere to run ducts. The usual answers are ductless mini splits or ducts routed through furred down soffits.
Multiply the system’s age in years by the cost of the repair. Over $5,000, replace it. Under $5,000, repair it. An R-22 system or failing ductwork changes the answer whatever the arithmetic says.
Most whole home installations take two to three days. Allow more time if the electrical panel needs upgrading or the ducts are being replaced.
Find out why we’re considered the favorite HVAC service in Marin County by our satisfied customers!
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