System Fit Checker
Four questions tell us whether your Austin system needs new equipment, new ductwork, or new controls.
Square footage, building type, what's running now, and what's actually bothering you. That's the same order a technician works through on a site visit, just faster.
- 4 inputs, no account
- ~1 min to an answer
- 1 page recommended
Check your fit
Starting range only — confirmed on a site visit
What the tool is actually doing
There's no black box here. The checker runs the same rule of thumb a technician uses to sanity-check a job before ever picking up a Manual J worksheet: roughly 400 to 600 square feet of conditioned space per ton of cooling capacity in this climate, adjusted down slightly for apartments and condos because shared walls and shared ceilings cut the load per square foot compared with a detached house exposed on all four sides.
A 1,800 square foot house lands around 3.5 to 4 tons on that rule. The same 1,800 square feet as a mid-building apartment might only need 3 to 3.5, because two walls and possibly the ceiling are buffered by conditioned neighbors instead of Texas attic heat. That's a real difference, and it's exactly the kind of adjustment that gets skipped when someone just reads the old nameplate and orders the same size again.
The building-type and square-footage answers set the tonnage band. The current-system and complaint answers do the second half of the job: they cross-reference what you have against what's actually wrong to decide whether the fix is airflow, equipment, controls, or ventilation — because a 4-ton house with uneven rooms usually doesn't need a bigger unit, it needs zoning or a duct rebalance, and a 3-ton house with no cooling at all from window units needs equipment before anything else.
01
Square footage sets the band
We divide your conditioned area by a per-ton figure between 400 and 600 sq ft, tightened for apartments and condos, to produce a low and a high tonnage estimate — never a single fake-precise number.
02
Current system rules out the obvious
If you're already on a ducted central system and the complaint is uneven rooms, the answer usually isn't a new condenser — it's the ductwork or the lack of zoning. If you're running window units with no ducts at all, equipment is legitimately the first move.
03
The complaint decides which of the five pages you need
No cooling or no heat points at cooling or heating. Uneven rooms points at zoning and controls. High bills with old ductwork points at duct sealing. Musty air points at fresh-air ventilation, almost regardless of tonnage.
04
It ends at a page, not a purchase
The tool never quotes a price and never books a job. It hands you the one service page most likely to explain your situation, and from there the inquiry form on that page — or a call to the shop — starts an actual site visit.
Why we won't skip the site visit
Two houses at the same square footage can need different tonnage because of window count, insulation, ceiling height and orientation — none of which a four-question form can see. The number above is where we start the conversation, not where we end it. A load calc on site with a static pressure test is what actually sets the quote.