HVAC Services in Los Gatos

The climate here and what it does to your system

The defining feature of the Los Gatos climate is the size of the daily swing, and the second is that the town does not really have one climate at all. Downtown sits around 380 feet at the foot of the Santa Cruz Mountains, while neighborhoods off Shannon Road, Kennedy Road and the Highway 17 corridor climb well above it. Summer afternoons reach the upper 80s and low 90s, higher in a heat wave, and then marine air spills through the gap in the mountains after dark and the temperature falls twenty degrees or more overnight.

That swing is an asset if your house can use it and a problem if it cannot. A well-sealed house with decent night ventilation coasts through a hot week. A 1960s ranch with single-pane glass and an attic that banked heat all day does not, and the air conditioner spends the evening undoing what the roof did.

Winter is where the terrain gets genuinely counterintuitive. Cold air is heavy, so on clear still nights it drains off the hills and pools on the lower ground. Homes down near the Blossom Hill Road flats can sit colder overnight than homes several hundred feet up the slope. Two customers a mile apart often have opposite complaints in January.

Sun exposure finishes the job. West-facing hillside homes take direct afternoon sun and hold heat well past nine. East-facing homes lose the sun by four and cool early. Orientation matters as much as square footage here, which is why a quote given over the phone is worth very little.