J. R. Credle
The heating and air shop on Portsmouth Boulevard.
Stock photo — send three of your own and they take this spot.
Portsmouth · answered during shop hours
About the shop
J. R. Credle works heating and air conditioning out of Portsmouth Boulevard, serving Portsmouth, Chesapeake and the surrounding cities. It is a name shop — the kind where the business is the person, and reputation travels by word of mouth between neighbours rather than through advertising.
Older Portsmouth housing stock brings its own problems. Systems retrofitted into houses built long before central air. Ductwork run through unconditioned crawlspaces. Equipment that has been repaired by four different people over twenty years, each leaving their own improvisation behind. Sorting that out takes someone willing to trace the system rather than guess at it.
What we do
- Repair and diagnosis
- Systems that will not start, will not hold a charge, or run constantly without cooling. The fault gets found before any part is ordered.
- Replacement
- New equipment matched to the house and to the ductwork it will be feeding. Undersized returns and leaking ducts get addressed rather than ignored.
- Heat pumps and furnaces
- Both, including the ones installed decades ago that nobody else wants to open up.
- Maintenance
- Cleaning, refrigerant checks and electrical inspection, before the season rather than during it.
- Older home retrofits
- Getting conditioned air into rooms that were never designed for it, without tearing the house apart.
- Crawlspace ductwork
- Ducts in a damp Tidewater crawlspace fail in ways they never do inland. Sealing, insulating and replacing runs that have given up.
How it works
Describe the problem
Call and say what the system is doing and when it started. Half of what is needed for a diagnosis comes from that conversation.
Trace the system
Equipment, ducts and controls together. A system that has been worked on repeatedly needs someone to look at the whole of it, not just the last thing that broke.
Fix it and say what is next
The repair gets made, and you get told honestly what else on the system is near the end of its life so nothing surprises you next season.
Find us
4308 Portsmouth Boulevard, Portsmouth, VA 23701
Based on Portsmouth Boulevard, working across Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Norfolk and Suffolk.
Questions people ask
Do you work on old systems?
Yes. A lot of the work here is on equipment other shops would rather condemn than repair.
How do I know if it is the unit or the ducts?
If the air coming out of the vents is cold but the house never cools, it is usually ducts. If the air itself is not cold, it is usually the unit. Either way it is worth having tested rather than guessed.
Is it worth putting money into a system this old?
Sometimes. It depends on the failure and the refrigerant. You will get told when a repair is throwing good money after bad.
Can you get to me today?
Call and ask. Losing heat in a cold snap or cooling in July gets moved up the list.
What are your hours?
Call the number on this page — hours are not listed publicly, and the fastest way to find out is to ask.
Leave a message
We'll call you back the same day.
(757) 337-1914