Fabrication, in house
Plenum boxes, transitions, radius elbows — drawn on sheet, cut, folded and locked on our own seams. Nothing waits on a warehouse that never stocked your house’s shape in the first place.
Old-house retrofits
The Fenwick Hollow Victorians have joist cavities a catalogue was never going to fit. We template the opening, make the fitting, and the duct disappears like it grew there.
Furnace-to-heat-pump conversions
Right-sized cold-climate units on ducts we first seal and balance — because a beautiful machine on leaky sheet metal is a violin with a cracked body.
A catalogue fitting is a compromise somebody else made about a house they never saw. I have made my living un-making those compromises.
Most companies install what the supplier stocks. We make what the house asks for. That single difference is why our retrofits hold their airflow numbers a decade later, why the shop still runs two benches and a brake, and why three generations of Copperline Row have the same phone number taped inside their furnace cabinet.
The shop book
Off the bench, into the house
Services & rates
The shop rates, published.
A shop that makes its own parts can publish its own prices. Every figure is the whole figure — metal, labour, disposal and the drawing — and it does not move because your basement is cold.
Ductwork survey & Manual D$180
Room-by-room layout, static-pressure budget, the drawing is yours
Duct sealing & rebalancingfrom $1,150
Mastic-sealed, damper-balanced, airflow verified per register
Custom fabrication, per fittingfrom $95
Cut, folded and seamed on our benches — no catalogue tax
Heat-pump conversion, ductedfrom $9,600
Manual J sizing, sealed ducts, commissioning sheet at handover
Furnace replacement, 96%+from $6,100
Old unit hauled, new drops fabricated to fit the old chase
Shop tune-up, heating or cooling$134
Combustion logged, static re-measured against the file
How the shop works
From template to trim-out
Four stations, the same order every time — because sheet metal rewards sequence and punishes improvisation.
The survey
Manual J for the load, Manual D for the layout, and a cardboard template wherever the house refuses to be square.
The bench
Fittings drawn, cut, folded and seamed in-house — then crated in installation order so the crew never waits on a part.
The fit
Old duct comes out, new duct goes in the same day where possible; the house is never left open overnight in January.
The proof
Anemometer at every register, static pressure at the unit, numbers pencilled on the commissioning sheet and filed.
Two national companies told us our 1904 house needed a bulkhead the width of the hallway. Anvil & Aire templated the joist bay, made five fittings, and the air flows like the house was drawn with it.
They sealed and re-made our ducts before they would sell us a heat pump — and then sized it two tons smaller than the quote we were holding from someone else. The February bill was the proof.
A fitting cracked on a Sunday in their tenth year of warranty. Otis’s son made the replacement on the bench Monday and installed it Tuesday, no invoice, no discussion. That is what a shop means.
Asked at the bench
Why does in-house fabrication matter to me?
Because the fittings that move air through your house are the parts catalogue suppliers standardise worst. When we make them, the duct matches the house instead of the house being shoe-horned around the duct — and the airflow numbers at commissioning actually reach the rooms furthest from the unit.
Can you work with my existing ductwork?
Usually, yes — and we will say so. The survey tells us whether your trunk can carry the new equipment or whether sections need re-making. Roughly a third of conversions keep most of the existing metal once it is sealed and balanced; those are the cheapest and we bid them that way.
What are Manual J and Manual D?
Manual J is the ACCA protocol that calculates heating and cooling load room by room; Manual D is its sibling for designing the duct that delivers it. Both are run on every job we quote, and both printouts go home with you — even if you hire someone else to do the work.
Do you handle the refrigerant transition?
Yes. New installs quote A2L-refrigerant equipment — R-32 and R-454B — as the R-410A phase-down tightens, and the shop is certified for the new handling rules. Your quote names the refrigerant, the rating (SEER2 cooling, HSPF2 heating) and what each means for the running cost.
How far does the shop travel?
Fenwick Hollow, Tarnmoor and Copperline Row are home. Beyond that we take retrofit work by the project rather than by the service call — ring the shop and ask; Otis answers between seven and eight most mornings.
THE SHOP RULE: the survey fee is credited in full against any work the survey leads to — which means the honest answer to “you don’t need us” costs you nothing but the phone call.
Bring the house to the bench.
Tell us what the house is doing and when it was last looked at. Someone who has actually made ductwork replies the same business day.
The metal is ours
Every seam we fold carries a ten-year workmanship warranty beside the equipment manufacturer’s — two promises, one phone number, no finger-pointing in between.
Anvil & Aire Sheet Metal Co. · 11 Tarnmoor Road · bench@anvilaire.example