How Redwood Heating & Air San Diego Was Born in San Diego
It was a Tuesday in August, about thirteen years ago. A woman named Eleanor called us in tears from her condo in Mission Valley. She’d paid another company $847 to fix her AC, and it died again three days later. They wouldn’t return her calls. Her husband was in a wheelchair. The indoor temperature was 94 degrees. We showed up that evening, found they’d replaced a perfectly good capacitor and ignored a failing contactor, and fixed it for the cost of the part plus an hour of labor. Eleanor tried to pay us more. We wouldn’t take it.
That night, driving home across the 8 freeway with the windows down, we made a decision. San Diego didn’t need another HVAC company. It needed one that wouldn’t treat a broken air conditioner like an ATM. The industry was full of commission-driven techs pushing equipment people didn’t need, vague diagnoses, and prices that seemed pulled from thin air. We started Redwood the following spring with $2,400 in tools and a used van. Our promise was simple: we’d tell people exactly what was wrong, show them if they wanted to see, and charge what the job actually cost. No performance bonuses for upselling. No mystery fees. That van had 187,000 miles and a radio that only picked up AM stations. We put 40,000 more on it that first year, mostly driving between San Diego neighborhoods where people remembered your name.
Gregory Hahn’s Personal Connection to the HVAC Trade
I didn’t plan on this. At nineteen, I was working at a lumber yard in El Cajon, loading two-by-tens onto flatbeds in July heat, saving money for I didn’t know what. My uncle Ray was a refrigeration mechanic for the grocery warehouses in Otay Mesa. One Saturday he needed help brazing a line set on a walk-in freezer. I remember the smell of the acetylene, the way the copper glowed cherry-red before the sil-phos flowed into the joint like water finding a crack. Ray let me try. My first attempt looked like a metal tumor. My tenth looked like something. He laughed and said I had “decent hands for a kid who counts on his fingers.”
Something hooked me. The physics of it, sure, but more than that. The moment when a system comes back to life and a kitchen full of sweating workers goes quiet with relief. Or a grandmother in Linda Vista who hasn’t slept in three nights because her compressor’s been cycling every four minutes, and suddenly her bedroom is 72 degrees and she’s crying again, but different tears.
I’ve been doing this thirteen years now. I’ve crawled through attics in San Diego where the fiberglass insulation was older than I was and the temperature hit 140 degrees. I’ve lain on my back in a crawl space in Coronado with water dripping on my face, tracing a refrigerant leak by the oil stain on a suction line. I’ve held a flashlight in my teeth at 11 PM in Lemoore, walking a retired Navy chief through why his heat pump was in defrost mode and he didn’t need a new system, just patience and a sensor adjustment.
If I weren’t doing this, I’d probably still be at that lumber yard. Or trying to build furniture in a garage, making tables that wobble. What gets me out of bed is the certainty that someone today is uncomfortable in their own home, maybe worried about money, maybe embarrassed they don’t understand what’s wrong, and I get to be the person who fixes it without making them feel small. That’s not nothing. That’s the whole thing.
Meet Gregory Hahn — The Person Behind Every Job
I’m Gregory Hahn, Founder and Master Technician at Redwood Heating & Air. I hold EPA Section 608 Universal certification and have completed factory training on Trane and Rheem systems. But the credential that matters most is the one you can’t frame: thirteen years of showing up when we said we would, looking people in the eye, and not leaving until they understood what we did and why.
I’m not a corporate franchise tech working on commission. I’m the person who answers the phone at 6 AM when your furnace quits on the coldest morning of the year. I still carry a multimeter in my truck that I’ve had since 2012. The screen is cracked but it reads true. On weekends, you’ll find me surf fishing at Mission Beach or rebuilding vintage stereo receivers, which is basically the same work, just with less refrigerant and better music.
Here’s my commitment to you: when I walk into your home, I treat it like my mother’s home. No shortcuts, no jargon to confuse you, no pressure. Just honest work at a fair price.
Our Promise to San Diego Homeowners
Honest pricing. We use flat-rate pricing based on actual time and materials, not what we think your neighborhood can bear. After that Mission Valley job with Eleanor, we built a pricing book from scratch, itemizing every common repair. You’ll see the price before we start. If we find something unexpected, we stop and talk. No surprises on the invoice.
Quality parts. We install OEM components from manufacturers like Lennox and Goodman, not generic aftermarket parts that save us fifteen dollars and cost you a callback in eighteen months. We keep a written log of every part we install and its warranty status. If it fails, we replace it. Period.
Standing behind every job. Our warranty isn’t a piece of paper in a drawer. It’s our name. In thirteen years, we’ve had to eat the cost of maybe a dozen callbacks. Each one taught us something. One was a brazing joint we rushed in July heat. Now we nitrogen-purge every line set, every time, even when we’re tired and the attic is brutal. The policy exists because we remember the failures.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed HVAC contractor, fully compliant with California CSLB requirements
- Insured & bonded for your protection and ours
- 13+ years serving San Diego homeowners and businesses
- 428 verified reviews averaging 4.6 out of 5 stars
- EPA Section 608 Universal certified
- Factory-trained on Trane and Rheem equipment
These aren’t decorations. They’re the baseline for letting someone into your home. State licensing means we’ve passed background checks and demonstrated competency to a regulatory board. Insurance and bonding mean if something goes wrong, you’re not chasing us personally for damages. Those 428 reviews represent real San Diego homeowners who took time to verify we did what we said we’d do. When you hire someone to work on the system that keeps your family safe and comfortable, you deserve more than a handshake. You deserve proof.
Rooted in San Diego
We’ve replaced condensers in the narrow alleys of North Park where you need a dolly and patience. We’ve serviced furnaces in the hills of La Mesa where the ductwork was installed when Kennedy was president. We’ve done emergency calls in Coronado during Navy graduation weekends when every hotel was booked and AC failures meant elderly relatives sleeping in lobbies. This city isn’t our market. It’s our home. We buy our parts from the same supply houses where the counter guys ask about our kids. We know which intersections flood in January storms and which neighborhoods lost power in the 2011 blackout. When you call Redwood, you’re not getting a dispatcher in another state. You’re getting Gregory, or someone we’ve trained personally, driving a truck with California plates and a cooler with actual ice in it.
Written by Gregory Hahn, Owner at Redwood Heating & Air San Diego, serving San Diego since 2011.