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Riptide Mechanical LLC logo, the word Riptide in blue with orange diagonal accents above Mechanical LLC in orange

The Texas Pride Project

We are giving a Texan a new system. Tell us who it should be.

Every so often we install a complete heating and cooling system for somebody in our own service area and hand them a bill for nothing. We do not draw the name out of a hat and we do not pick it on our own. Somebody who knows them tells us the story first.

Takes about five minutes Nominate someone

Nominations are taken through the form only · free · no purchase · no obligation

Who we are looking for

Somebody whose story you would tell a stranger.

Texas summers are not evenly hard. They are hardest on the people with the least room to absorb a five figure repair, and those are usually the same people who never ask anybody for anything.

A single parent working two jobs

The house is full, the system is not keeping up, and every dollar that would fix it already has a name on it.

A veteran on a fixed income

Retired or disabled, on an income that does not move when the estimate does.

An elderly widow or widower

Still in the house where they raised a family, with that family now several states away and no way to see the problem.

Those are the three that came up when we sat down to plan this, and they are examples rather than a checklist. If you know a Texan whose summer is harder than it ought to be, send us the story. We would rather read a hundred and pick one than never hear about the right one.

A Riptide Mechanical technician shaking hands with a homeowner at the front door of a house
The part of this job that has nothing to do with equipment.

How it works

Four steps, and none of them cost the family anything.

  1. You send the nomination.The form is at the bottom of this page. It takes about five minutes, and the part that matters is the story rather than the paperwork.
  2. We read every one.Both sides of the state, Austin and the Coastal Bend. Nothing gets filtered out by a keyword before a person has read it.
  3. We call, and then we come out.Once there is a shortlist we look at the home in person, so what goes in is sized for that house rather than for a photograph.
  4. We install it.Equipment and labor, covered by us, by the same crew that would do it for a paying customer and to the same standard.

What we can promise, and what we cannot

This is a small company doing something that costs it money, so we would rather be straight with you at the top than disappoint somebody at the bottom.

  • The home has to be in our coverage area. Outside that we cannot get a crew back to it reliably, and a system nobody can service is not much of a gift.
  • The person receiving it has to own the home, or have the owner in the conversation and in writing. Equipment that belongs to a landlord is not ours to give away.
  • Some houses need work beyond the system. Electrical, ductwork, a permit that takes its own time. If that comes up we will say so plainly rather than start something we cannot finish well.
  • We choose, and we will not be able to explain every decision. There is no vote, no draw and no leaderboard. Reading these and picking one will be the hardest part of the whole thing.
There is no catch, and there is nothing to buy.

Nominating is free. No entry fee, no purchase, no subscription, no obligation on anybody. You do not have to be a Riptide customer and neither do they. If somebody tells you otherwise about this program, it did not come from us.

Go to the nomination form

Why we are doing it

Riptide got started on commercial refrigeration, in the rooms where a failure costs somebody their inventory and sometimes their week. You learn quickly in that work what separates an inconvenience from a real problem, and you get good at telling them apart.

A house in August with no cooling, lived in by somebody who has no way to solve it, is a real problem. We are not going to fix that statewide. We can fix it one house at a time, in the two places we actually work, and we can be honest about the size of it while we do.

Ride the tide with Texas pride. It is on the truck, and this is what we would like it to mean.

The nomination

Tell us about them.

Write it the way you would say it out loud. Nobody here is scoring the writing. We are trying to understand a situation, so plain and specific beats polished every time.

What happens next
You get a reference number on screen the moment it sends. A person reads it. If we need more we will call the number you leave.
What it costs
Nothing, to you or to them, at any point.
How to send it
Through this form. Nominations are not taken over the phone, so the lines stay clear for people whose heating or cooling is down.

About you

About them

Free to send. No purchase, no obligation, nothing to buy.

Before you send it

What people ask about the giveaway.

Does it cost anything to nominate somebody?
No. There is nothing to buy, nothing to enter and no fee. Being a Riptide customer does not make anybody more likely to be picked, and never having been one does not make them less likely.
Can I nominate myself?
Yes. There is nothing undignified about it, and some of the people we most want to hear about are the ones with nobody left nearby to write it for them.
Do they have to know I nominated them?
No. Tell us on the form whether they know, and we will handle the first phone call carefully either way. Somebody does have to be able to let us in the door before anything gets installed.
What if they rent?
Then the owner of the home has to be part of the conversation from the start. We cannot replace equipment we do not have written permission to touch, and we will not put a tenant in the middle of that.
What exactly does the family receive?
A complete heating and cooling system, sized for their home and installed by our own crew, with the equipment and the labor covered. What that means in equipment terms is decided after we see the house, because a small home on the coast and a two story in Round Rock do not need the same machine.
Does anybody have to be on camera?
No, and it does not change whether we install. We will ask, they are free to say no, and the system goes in either way.
How often are you doing this?
It starts every so often rather than on a schedule. If it works and people keep sending stories, we would like it to be more frequent. We would rather do it properly and slowly than announce a calendar we cannot keep.
Which areas is this open to?
Our coverage area, across Central Texas and the Coastal Bend. If the home is outside it, we cannot get a crew back to it reliably enough to stand behind the work. The service area page has the current list.