Meet the Chicago Team Behind Fireside Heating & Air Co. of Chicago
We’ve been fixing furnaces and installing air conditioners across Chicago since 2018, and the work’s only as good as the people who show up at your door. Our crew is small enough that we know each other’s strengths, and seasoned enough that we’ve seen just about every heating and cooling problem this city’s old housing stock can throw at us. What ties us together is simple: we show up when we say, we explain what we’re doing, and we don’t leave until it’s done right.
Our People
Terry Kowalski, Owner
I started Fireside in 1984 after six years of working for another outfit where the motto seemed to be “fix it just well enough to get to the next call.” I didn’t like that math then, and I still don’t. I hold an EPA Section 608 Universal certification and a Chicago HVAC contractor license, though these days I spend more time running diagnostics on our dispatch system than on actual furnaces. I live in Portage Park with my wife and a dog who has never once appreciated the perfectly balanced airflow in our home. You’ll know it’s me on the phone if I tell you what’s probably wrong before I even send someone out, and if I’m wrong, I’ll say so.
Marcus T., Lead Service Technician
Marcus has been with us for fourteen years, which in Chicago HVAC years is roughly a geological epoch. He’s NATE-certified in air conditioning and heat pump service, and he’s the technician we send when a homeowner has been through two or three other companies that couldn’t figure out why the second floor of a Bungalow never cools down. Marcus grew up in Austin and still lives there with his two kids; he knows the particular headache of Chicago’s balloon-frame construction and the way our lake-effect humidity can mask a refrigerant leak until August. He carries a notebook where he sketches ductwork problems, and he’s surprisingly good at explaining why your system is doing what it’s doing without making you feel foolish for asking.
Elena R., Senior Installer
Elena joined us in 2016 after eight years doing commercial refrigeration, which means she’s unusually good at thinking three-dimensionally about airflow in tight spaces. She holds an EPA 608 Universal and is our go-to for mini-split installations in Chicago’s vintage courtyard buildings and converted greystones where there’s no basement and no easy path for line sets. Elena lives in Logan Square and bikes to most jobs when weather permits, which she claims gives her useful intel on which neighborhoods are dealing with brownouts or transformer issues before she even checks her phone. She has strong opinions about where not to mount outdoor units, and she will share them.
Darnell J., Service Coordinator
Darnell is the live voice you get when you call us at 2 a.m. because your furnace quit on the coldest night in January. He’s been with Fireside for nine years, starting as a parts runner and working his way up to running our dispatch board. He’s not a technician, but he’s picked up enough from listening to Marcus and Elena that he can usually tell whether you’re describing a failed ignitor or a bad limit switch, which means the right person shows up with the right parts. Darnell lives in Chatham and is famously patient with callers who are upset, which is most callers at 2 a.m. He keeps a list of every dog name he’s learned from customers; he’s at 340 and counting.
Aisha K., Apprentice Technician
Aisha is in her second year of our apprenticeship program, splitting time between coursework at Daley College and ride-alongs with Marcus and Elena. She’s already EPA 608-certified and has started handling simpler service calls on her own, mostly capacitor swaps and thermostat replacements in Chicago’s condo buildings where the systems are newer and the access panels are, mercifully, in hallways rather than crawl spaces. Aisha grew up in Rogers Park and is particularly interested in heat pump technology, which she correctly notes is going to matter a lot as Chicago’s winters get more unpredictable. She asks more questions than any apprentice we’ve had, which we mean as a compliment.
One Standard, Every Job
We’re not a franchise, and we’re not a call center with a map of Chicago taped to the wall. Every technician on this page has been background-checked, wears a uniform, and puts on shoe covers without being asked because that’s what the K.E.Y.S. code means in practice: Krafted right, Every time, Your home first, Standing behind it. The 90-Day Done Right Promise isn’t a slogan we print on the vans; it’s a written guarantee that applies to every repair and installation we do, across all nine brands we service, from Carrier to Daikin to the ancient Rheem that’s somehow still running in a Bridgeport basement. The price we quote is the price you pay. We answer our own phones. We will be there when we say. And if we miss the mark, we make it right without paperwork or argument because that’s the only way this works for forty-two years.
Written by Terry Kowalski, Owner at Fireside Heating & Air Co. of Chicago, serving Chicago since 2018.