Three careers spent inside New York buildings

Dennis Marchetti, founder

Dennis started at 19 as a porter in a Washington Heights co-op and became its live-in superintendent at 26, a job he held for fourteen years. A super's training is the building itself: steam that knocks when condensate cannot get home, a boiler that short-cycles when its controls drift, sleeves that sweat every July. Nearby small-building owners began hiring him for their boiler rooms on his off hours, and by 2016 the waiting list made the decision for him. He founded Empire City Air Care that year in an Inwood workshop, and he still walks the boiler room first on any new building's visit.

Priya Natarajan, service lead, cooling

Priya ran PTAC and through-wall sleeve changeouts for a Manhattan property management firm, across a portfolio of about forty buildings. Cooling at that scale is logistics wearing a tool belt: freight elevator windows, doorman sign-ins, tenants who need the unit back by dinner. She joined the company in 2019 and runs the cooling schedule, planning each building's access before the crew rolls.

Tom O'Connell, heating lead

Tom's apprenticeship began at 21 in Bronx boiler rooms, carrying tools for men who could hear a steam trap fail from the stairwell. Twenty years on steam and hydronic systems followed, the last stretch running a two-man heating crew for a Bronx landlord group. He joined in 2021, runs the heating schedule and the fall boiler rounds, and still trusts his ears first and his gauges second.