Rich Kessler
Owner · Master Mechanical
Learned the trade handing wrenches to his dad, who kept the boilers running at the old Ent Air Force Base. Founded Switchback in 2009.
About Switchback
Three Generations of Colorado Springs Winters
Founded 2009 · family owned · the same faces on your porch year after year
Rich Kessler’s father spent thirty years keeping the boilers alive at the old Ent Air Force Base — the kind of job where “it can wait until Monday” wasn’t in the vocabulary. Rich grew up handing him wrenches and listening to him grumble about contractors who oversold and undersized.
So when Rich and Dana founded Switchback in 2009, the rules were already written: size it honestly, tune it for altitude, put the price in writing, and answer the phone on weekends. Sixteen years and six trucks later, their son Eli is the third Kessler in the trade — currently holder of the shop’s tune-up speed record, pending Gus’s appeal.
The name? A switchback is how you climb a mountain road — steady, deliberate, no shortcuts. It’s also how we’d describe getting a 96%-efficiency furnace running right at 6,035 feet.
Who shows up
The Crew
Licensed, background-checked, and famous for shoe covers.
Dana Kessler
Co-Owner · Office
The voice on the phone and the reason the schedule actually holds. Quotes you'll get from her match the invoice.
Gus Ortega
Service Tech
Fourteen years on Front Range furnaces. The valley's last great swamp-cooler whisperer.
Priya Shah
Comfort Advisor · Installs
Runs the load calculations and the install crew. Will talk you out of an oversized system every single time.
Eli Kessler
Apprentice
Third generation of Kesslers with cold hands in January. Currently owns the shop's tune-up speed record.
Check us
Promises With Paper Behind Them
- Licensed & insured mechanical contractor — El Paso County. Permits pulled on every install; city inspections met on site.
- Fully insured — liability and workers’ comp; certificate emailed on request, before work starts.
- Factory-trained, certified techs — and every install combustion-tuned for altitude, documented in writing.
- 100% satisfaction guarantee — if it’s not right, we come back until it is.
Around town
The Springs Is Home
We keep the furnace running free of charge at two family shelters downtown, sponsor a Little League team that Gus coaches with alarming intensity, and every October the shop runs a filter-and-CO-detector drive for seniors. If you see a Switchback van at a trailhead on a Sunday — that’s just Rich. He earned it.
Talk to the family, not a call center
Call before noon and we're usually there today — heat or cool, seven days a week.