Building, remodeling & home performance
Kitchens, baths and additions. Heritage trim and custom carpentry. Energy audits, air sealing and insulation that make an old house comfortable without turning it into a space-age bubble.
Princeton, NJ · Since 1999
Your house is a system. We work on all of it.
Tay River Builders has been remodeling, restoring and tightening up homes around Princeton for more than twenty-five years. With The Big Chill, our heating and cooling division, one team handles the shell of your house and the equipment that heats and cools it, and makes sure the two work together.
The Big Chill
Heating & Cooling
Heating & Cooling
Ethical heating, cooling & ventilation
Design and installation of heat pump systems, plus repair and maintenance of all HVAC systems. Our systems are cost-effective and environmentally sustainable, and we size them for the house you actually have.
Why one team matters
Fix the house first. Then size the equipment to fit it.
Most contractors only see their slice of a house. Change one part and you change the others: tighten the attic and the old furnace is suddenly oversized; replace the furnace without fixing the ducts and the upstairs is still too hot. We treat the shell, the ducts and the equipment as one system.
- 01
Measure
We start by testing: blower door, duct leakage, airflow and room-by-room temperatures.
- 02
Tighten
Air seal and insulate where it pays: attics, rim joists, ducts. In deep upgrades we often cut air leakage in half and triple insulation values.
- 03
Right-size
Then design heating and cooling for the house you’ll have afterward, which means smaller equipment, steadier comfort and lower bills.
- 04
Follow up
A year after we finish, we come back to review the design and the construction with you. Much of our work is referrals and repeat clients.
- 1999
- Founded by brothers Jesse and Abel Smith
- 40%
- Lower winter utility bills, reported by a client after whole-house insulation
- 11° to 2°
- Floor-to-ceiling wall temperature spread before and after an attic upgrade, measured by the homeowner
- 2,000+
- Energy retrofits completed, by Jesse’s count
Selected work
Craft you can see, and plenty you can’t.
Carved-stone bathrooms, hand-milled cypress dormers, a cherry vanity mended with handmade butterfly keys, and the attic work nobody photographs but everybody feels.
In their words
4.8 on Google · 16 reviews“The outcome was impressive, realizing a 40% cost reduction on the PSE&G bills on a year to year basis during last winter.”
“They took their time to do everything properly and went above and beyond as if they were doing this on their own house.”
“Not only are we enjoying lower utility bills, we are more comfortable in our home after Tay River’s work. Jesse was very receptive to our questions, and took time to explain everything.”
“On a 90 degree day the window A/C’s can actually maintain a constant 75 degrees in the house. … For the comfort alone it is money well spent.”
The Big Chill Heating & Cooling
Heat pumps, designed by people who understand houses.
Our heating and cooling division moves homes off fossil fuels and onto air-source heat pumps, and looks after the systems you already have. It works the same way the rest of us do: we measure before we recommend, and we tell you when sealing the house will do more than a bigger unit.
Heat pump design & installation
One efficient system for heating and cooling, designed around your house and its ductwork instead of a rule of thumb.
Repair & maintenance of all HVAC
Furnaces, boilers, air conditioners and heat pumps. If it heats, cools or moves air, we can look after it.
Ventilation & airflow
Fresh air where it’s needed, and duct and return fixes for rooms that never seem to get comfortable.
Who you’ll work with
A craftsman and a building scientist.
Tay River was founded in 1999 by brothers Jesse and Abel Smith. Abel is a highly skilled craftsman with the hands-on know-how to build things properly. Jesse is an avid student of building science who would rather measure than guess.
Between them they’ve restored and remodeled houses across central New Jersey and Bucks County, completed more than 2,000 energy retrofits, and spent years as an authorized contractor in New Jersey’s Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program. Jesse also holds a New Jersey master HVAC license. Most of their work still comes from referrals and repeat clients.
Our story & approach“Turns out people think you’ll be more successful improving performance if you actually measure stuff. Who knew!”
Start a project
Tell us about your house.
Whether it’s a cold bedroom, a tired bathroom, a heat pump quote you’re unsure about, or a dormer that’s seen better days, start with a conversation. We’ll tell you honestly what we’d do, and what we wouldn’t.