As an alternative to Angie's List, I would recommend Washington Checkbook.

Its a similar thing, but its been around much longer, and cheaper. I've gotten great recs from there.

Anonymous wrote:I am beyond thrilled with Gaithersburg AC. They work all over the metro area. Extremely good technicians, very responsive and a good price on a terrific replacement system. We also had them convert us from electric heat to gas heat and couldn't be happier. The brand they put in is Bryant.

Another Gaithersburg A/C fan here; they are great. They did our oil to gas conversion. Nice, nice guys and very reliable.

OP, we used Tucker's to service our oil furnace when we moved in our house; they were also a good company to deal with.

I second Angie's list.

Also, we had some HVAC work done recently by Moran's and they were terrific. On time, reasonably priced, knowledgeable. They did NOT recommend a major fix (unlike another company that only seemed out for the $$), but they did give us a realistic picture of under what conditions that might need to be done in the future.

I am beyond thrilled with Gaithersburg AC. They work all over the metro area. Extremely good technicians, very responsive and a good price on a terrific replacement system. We also had them convert us from electric heat to gas heat and couldn't be happier. The brand they put in is Bryant.

Don't count goodman put , they were bought by a major company years a go and have the best warranty 10 years+, installation is the most important not necessarily brand .

I used tuckers for my upstairs unit replacement in march. I found them to be very good and was very pleased with the install. Very clean, on time etc. No surprises with final price.

I do not know how old my previous unit was. Am so pleasantly shocked how efficient the unit is and how much my utility bill has gone down!

If you're not a member of Angies List, I would consider signing up. I think it's $75/year and I've found some great service providers on there. You can search close to your area and then read the user comments to get an idea of what it may cost for your type of work.

We're replacing our AC and furnace (both are dinosaurs 20+ years old and the evap coil finally went on the AC). I'd love some thoughts, either good or bad, on the following brands: Amana, Trane, Bryant, Ruud - we're looking at pretty basic models with any brand - no bells and whistles.

Also does anyone have any experience with Tuckers, Mannix, or Bethany Air as installers for a full replacement system? We've heard installation is more important than the actual parts, but we're newish to the area so we're relying on Angie's List and BBB to evaluate installers. These were the 3 we felt most comfortable with, though we got 2 other estimates. One guy was 6.5 hours late with no call and the other guy was pushy and doing a hard sell and that was offputting. There doesn't seem to be much difference price-wise with the quotes, so brand or installer info would be much appreciated.