Furnace, boiler, steam and air conditioning repair, replacement and maintenance for bungalows with gravity ducts, two-flats on one-pipe steam and greystones with nowhere to put a duct. Owner-run, uniformed, and answered around the clock.
The crest is how you know it is usEvery technician wears it. Every van carries it.No call center, no commissioned closers, no tablet menu at the kitchen table. Two trades, a crew you will recognize, and standards we can actually keep.
No-heat and no-cool calls reach a person who can send a van, not a call center reading a script.
Diagnostic fee told to you up front. Replacement quotes measured, written and held for 30 days.
We size equipment to the house and Chicago's −4°F design day, never to the square footage on a listing.
Bungalow gravity ducts, one-pipe steam in two-flats, greystones with nowhere for a duct. We know what is downstairs.
Every technician wears the KW crest and arrives in a marked van. You know who is at the door before you open it.
The permit is on the quote, not a surprise. Nicor and ComEd rebates are applied before you sign, not mentioned after.
We do not also clean your sewer, rewire your panel or install a generator. Two trades, done properly, across Chicago's 77 community areas and the North Shore.
Furnaces, heat pumps, water heaters
One-pipe, two-pipe, hot water
Central air, ductless, high-velocityNo coupon wall, no countdown timer. The three things Chicago homeowners actually call us for, priced where we can price them.
We measure the house, size the system to it, and give you one honest number in writing. No commission games at the kitchen table.
A full heating inspection before Chicago's first hard freeze, not a ten minute filter swap.
A furnace out in a January cold snap is not a next-week problem. The phone is answered around the clock by someone who can dispatch.
The city's housing stock is unusually old and unusually specific. Pick yours and see what is probably in the basement, what usually goes wrong, and how we approach it.
Around 80,000 of these brick one-and-a-halfs ring the city. Most started on a gravity warm-air furnace with enormous 18 to 24 inch trunk ducts that moved air with no blower at all. A modern furnace bolted onto that duct tree is a mismatch, and it is why the upstairs bedroom is always the cold one.
Two-flats and greystones from this era typically run one-pipe steam under 2 psi, with condensate draining back down the same pipe the steam came up. It only works if every main is still pitched correctly and every radiator has a functioning air vent. A century of settling and paint kills both.
Larger vintage buildings usually ran two-pipe steam, and here is the part most contractors never mention: a two-pipe system can often be converted to low-temperature hot water without ripping out the distribution piping. That opens the door to condensing boilers or a heat pump, at a fraction of a gut renovation.
Plenty of Chicago houses have no viable path for trunk ducts. Plaster on lath, masonry party walls, eight-foot ceilings and no chase. Forcing it means soffits through every room and a wrecked plaster budget. The right answers are ductless mini-splits or small-duct high-velocity, and which one depends on the house, not on what we stock.
Newer construction and North Shore colonials are usually forced air, which makes them the easy ones. The traps here are different: a 90%-plus condensing furnace needs sidewall venting and a condensate path, a two-story on one thermostat will never be comfortable, and half the systems we see were sized off the square footage on the listing.
The company is named after Kona and Woody, who belong to the two of us who run it. Their crest is on every uniform and every van, so you know exactly who is at the door, and so there is a name on the line when the work is checked.
There are excellent large contractors in this market, and if you need a sewer line and a generator on the same day, call one. Here is the honest difference.
Chicago has its own heat ordinance, its own permit path and its own design conditions. Knowing them is not a marketing line, it is the job.
The Heat Ordinance runs from September 15 until June 1. Where heat is supplied, units must reach at least 68°F between 8:30am and 10:30pm and 66°F overnight. We schedule heating work around that calendar, not around when it happens to get cold.
For buildings with individual heating equipment in each unit, the city requires that equipment be capable of maintaining 68°F under expected Chicago winter conditions. That is a capacity requirement, and it is exactly what a load calculation proves.
Chicago sits in IECC Climate Zone 5A with a 99% winter design temperature of roughly −4°F at O'Hare, against about 91°F in summer. Size to that and the system carries the worst night of the year. Guess, and it does not.
Sources: Chicago Heat Ordinance, City of Chicago Department of Buildings; Express Permit Program for mechanical work, City of Chicago; design temperatures and IECC Climate Zone 5A, Chicago HVAC sizing guidance. Illinois issues no state HVAC contractor license (licensing overview); we hold EPA Section 608 certification and pull the permits each job requires.
Age, what is in the basement, which rooms misbehave. Two minutes, and it tells us more than an address does.
A real visit. We look at the equipment, the ducts or the piping, the venting and the load. Then we tell you what we found.
Options in plain language with rebates already applied. No tablet menu, no same-day-only discount, no pressure.
Installed, commissioned and tested. Kona checks the work for a reason. You get the paperwork and the permits.
Most maintenance plans are a filter change and an invoice. This one is two real visits a year, priority when the city is in a cold snap, and money off everything else.
Covers one residential system. Additional systems at a reduced rate. Cancel any time, no exit fee.
Membership is billed monthly. Priority scheduling applies to members in Chicago and our suburban service area.
Real 2026 figures, not "up to" numbers. We put these on the quote rather than mentioning them after the install.
| Equipment | Rebate |
|---|---|
| Furnace, 97%+ AFUE, with smart thermostat | $275 |
| Furnace, 95%+ AFUE, with smart thermostat | $200 |
| Furnace, 97%+ AFUE, on its own | $225 |
| Furnace, 95%+ AFUE, on its own | $150 |
| Boiler, 95%+ AFUE, under 300 MBTUH | $350 |
| Combination boiler, sealed combustion and modulating | $500 |
| Tankless water heater, UEF 0.95+ | $150 |
| Smart thermostat | $25 |
Equipment and efficiency conditions apply to each rebate. Sources: Nicor Gas residential rebates; 25C termination under OBBBA.
Chicago is organized into 77 official community areas whose boundaries never change, and building stock tracks those lines closely. It is why we ask for your neighborhood rather than just a ZIP code.
Chicago: 60601 60602 60603 60604 60605 60606 60607 60608 60609 60610 60611 60612 60613 60614 60615 60616 60618 60619 60620 60622 60623 60624 60625 60626 60628 60630 60631 60634 60636 60637 60638 60639 60640 60641 60642 60643 60644 60645 60646 60647 60651 60652 60653 60654 60655 60656 60657 60659 60660 60661
North Shore and Northwest suburbs: 60004 60005 60006 60010 60015 60016 60018 60022 60025 60026 60029 60035 60040 60043 60045 60047 60053 60056 60061 60062 60067 60068 60069 60070 60074 60076 60077 60089 60090 60091 60093 60173 60193 60194 60195 60201 60202 60203 60712 60714
Each location has its own Google Business Profile and, where listed, its own line. Call whichever is closest; the same small crew and the same standards answer all of them.
Also serving Skokie, Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, Highwood, Lake Bluff, Northfield, Glenview, Lincolnshire, Riverwoods, Buffalo Grove, Wheeling, Prospect Heights, Mount Prospect, Park Ridge, Des Plaines, Palatine, Rolling Meadows, Inverness, Lake Zurich, Hawthorn Woods, Hoffman Estates, Elk Grove Village, Morton Grove, Niles, Lincolnwood. Not listed? Call and ask. We would rather tell you honestly that you are outside our range than send someone two hours late.
The same three problems come up in the same three kinds of house, year after year. This is how each one gets handled when it is us who turns up.
Three companies say replace the boiler. We start with a vent survey on every radiator and a level on the main, because on one-pipe steam the bang is almost always pitch and venting, not the boiler. If the boiler does need to go, you hear it from us with the combustion numbers to back it up.
The furnace was replaced a decade ago and bolted onto the original gravity trunks. We measure the ducts, run the load for the house as it actually is, and usually land on resealing and rebalancing plus a second zone or a ductless head upstairs. Not a bigger furnace that short-cycles all winter.
The call is answered by someone who can dispatch, not a call center. We walk you through the safety steps on the phone, arrive with the parts most likely to fail on your make of furnace, and quote the diagnostic before we touch anything. The Heat Ordinance clock matters to landlords, and we work to it.
We are a small company, so you get the same faces and the same standards every time, whether the call comes from a Lakeview two-flat or a Deerfield colonial.
Tell us the address, the age and which room misbehaves, and we will tell you what we think before we quote. If the answer is that you should keep the system you have, that is what we will say.
