How Bakersfield Cooling Desk works

Bakersfield Cooling Desk is a free referral service for homeowners in Bakersfield and the towns around it. We are not an HVAC contractor. When you send a request, we pass it to one independent local HVAC company that serves your area, and that company contacts you to price and schedule the work.

Who pays

A fee from the HVAC company covers the referral; homeowners are never billed by us. Pricing, scheduling and the repair itself all sit with that company.

The license we look for

In California, a job worth $1,000 or more in labor and materials, or one that needs a permit, has to be done by a contractor licensed by the Contractors State License Board. Heating and air conditioning is license class C-20, and a current C-20 is the bar for every company we pass requests to. The board's free lookup at cslb.ca.gov shows whether a license is active; it takes a minute and is worth doing before the truck arrives.

What the company agrees to

Pricing on paper ahead of the work, a City of Bakersfield or Kern County permit whenever the job calls for one, and no hard sell. If a visit misses on any of those, call (661) 605-3123 and say so.

Where the numbers come from

Each guide ends with its own source list. The 100 degree day counts and the housing age figures are ours, worked out from Meadows Field records published by NOAA and from Census Bureau survey tables. The method is here.

A Welcome to Bakersfield sign above the glass doors of a transit station — Bakersfield sits at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley, where the summer heat builds and stays. Photo: Diego De Alba / Unsplash

Photo credits

Photos are from Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License: Fabio Sasso, Alissa Schilling, Austin Curtis, Diego De Alba, yanagi. None of these photos shows a particular company's job.