Cardinal Heating & Air

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Kirkland, WA
Cardinal Heating & Air

Since 1991, Cardinal Heating and Air has proudly served our neighbors in Seattle and the greater Eastside with quality HVAC equipment and service.

Since 1992, Cardinal Heating and AC has proudly served our neighbors in Seattle and the greater Eastside, including Redmond, Issaquah, Kirkland, Bellevue, Woodinville, Mercer Island, and Bothell. We offer complete Installation, Maintenance, Repair and Service of: A/C Systems, Boilers, Gas Furnaces, Radiant Floors, Geothermal Systems, Heat Pumps, and solar heating system. Cardinal Heating and A/C,

Inc installs and services several product lines so that each customer gets the "just right" system for them. Cardinal backs all of it's products and have selected those that are the best for homeowners solutions in the Northwest.

06/05/2026

If your home runs an electric furnace, June is the month to think about it.
Electric furnaces are the most expensive way to heat a home on the Eastside. They turn one unit of electricity into one unit of heat; no more, no less. A heat pump turns one unit of electricity into three or four units of heat. The math is not close.
Most Eastside electric furnaces sit in homes built before 1990, townhouses, older single-family homes, and condos. Many of them have run for 25 or 30 years without anyone questioning the bill.
June is when the questioning starts to pay off.
Off-season replacement timing. PSE rebates that stack with federal credits. A heat pump that heats in winter and cools in summer, replacing your furnace and adding AC in one project.
If your PSE bills climb every January and you have always assumed that is just what winter costs, it does not have to be.

06/03/2026

Your thermostat is lying to you. Or at least, it is only telling you about one room.
The temperature on your wall reading reflects the air about three feet off the floor, in one specific spot, near the sensor. Meanwhile your upstairs bedroom is 8 degrees warmer, your kitchen during dinner prep is 6 degrees warmer, and the south-facing room with afternoon sun is its own climate zone entirely.
A single thermostat in a single room cannot manage a multi-room home with any precision. That is not your AC failing. That is the limit of single-zone design.
Zoning, smart sensors, and properly balanced ductwork are the actual fixes. If you have lived with hot rooms for years thinking your AC was the problem, the AC may not be the problem at all.

06/01/2026

June 1.
The thermostat changes color today. The window units come out of storage. The first hot week is somewhere in the next 30 days. For 34 years, Cardinal has watched Eastside homes do this exact dance every spring. The houses that hold their cool are the ones whose owners did something in April or May. The houses that struggle are the ones still hoping last summer was a fluke.
Whatever you find yourself doing this month; changing a filter, asking us a question, scheduling a tune-up, or just running the AC for the first time, we are glad to be in the neighborhood for it.

05/29/2026

The best time to replace a gas furnace is when you don't need one.
Most homeowners think about their furnace in January. We think about it in May.
Here is why: when your furnace fails on a 28-degree night, you have no time to compare brands, weigh efficiency ratings, or sequence the install around your schedule. You buy whatever is in stock and whoever can come the soonest.
A spring or summer replacement is a different conversation. You choose the right system for your home. You qualify for off-season rebates. You install on your timeline, not the weather's.
If your gas furnace is 15 years old, made it through last winter on borrowed time, or is starting to short-cycle, the smart move is to handle it now. While the calendar is calm. Before the cold makes the decision for you.

05/27/2026

One question we get more than any other: "Don't heat pumps just heat?"
No. A heat pump is one unit that does both.
In winter it pulls heat from the outside air and brings it inside — even when it is in the 30s outside, there is still heat to extract.
In summer it reverses. Same unit, same refrigerant lines, now pulling heat from inside your home and pushing it out. That is your AC.
One system. Two seasons. No separate furnace. No separate AC. And because heat pumps are the most efficient way to do either job, your energy bills drop in both directions.
For Eastside homes where winters are mild and summers are short but real, a heat pump is the system the climate was made for.

05/26/2026

We remember the men and women who gave everything so the rest of us could come home to ours.
From all of us at Cardinal -Thank you.

05/22/2026

The Eastside spends most of the year in sweater weather. So when the first 80-degree week shows up, most homes are not ready for it — and neither are the people inside them.

Five questions worth asking before summer lands:

Did your AC take longer than usual to cool the house last summer? That is the system telling you something is slipping.

Are some rooms always warmer than others? Airflow imbalance gets worse as outdoor temps climb.

When did you last change your filter? A clogged one can cut cooling efficiency by 15%.

Is there debris piled around your outdoor unit? It needs two feet of clearance on all sides to breathe.

How old is your system? Most AC units last 12 to 15 years. After that, every summer is borrowed time.

If any of those gave you a pause, now is the time to handle it. Not the week of the first heat wave, when every HVAC company on the Eastside is fully booked.

05/20/2026

Every Eastside homeowner with a two-story house knows the feeling. Downstairs is comfortable. Upstairs is a sauna. You crank the thermostat. Downstairs gets cold. Upstairs is still a sauna.

Heat rises. Most homes were built with a single zone and ductwork sized for an average which means no floor actually gets what it needs.

A few things that usually fix it:

Balance your dampers. Most homeowners do not know their ducts have adjustable dampers. Closing them slightly on the main floor pushes more air upstairs.

Run the fan on "on," not "auto." Constant air circulation evens out temperatures between floors faster than the AC alone can.

Look at your registers. Furniture, rugs, and curtains block more airflow than people realize. Clear them.

If none of that works, the system itself is the bottleneck. Zoning, a ductless head upstairs, or a duct redesign solves it permanently and a properly sized system never has this problem in the first place.

05/18/2026

Your AC runs about 90 days a year on the Eastside. That leaves nine months of stillness, dust settling, moisture creeping in, refrigerant slowly slipping — before you flip it on in June.
Three checks worth doing before the first warm week:
Filter. A clogged one can drop efficiency by 15%. Change it now.
Outdoor coil. Leaves, twigs, and winter debris pile up around it. Clear two feet of space around the unit.
Cooling time. If your home took longer than usual to cool last summer, that is the signal something is slipping inside the system.
Most of these are 15-minute jobs. None of them require us. We are just here when the math gets bigger than a filter.

05/15/2026

The Eastside is not Seattle.

Different climate. Different homes. Different heating and cooling challenges.

Older Kirkland craftsmans with original radiators. Mid-century Bellevue splits with their quirky duct runs. Newer Sammamish builds engineered for heat pumps from day one. Each one has its own logic.

We have been learning these homes for 34 years. That knowledge is what we bring to every in-home consultation.

Address

13649 NE 126th Place , Suite 101
Kirkland, WA
98034

Telephone

+14258279997

Website

http://cardinalheating.com/

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