GTA's Most Trusted HVAC Team — 20 Years and Counting
We are not the biggest HVAC company in the GTA. We are the most committed. Every call, every job, every customer — handled with the same standard Rick Li set when he founded High Efficiency in 2005.
High Efficiency Cooling & Heating: Built on a Promise to Do Better
Rick Li was thriving as a top salesperson for one of the GTA's largest HVAC firms when one moment changed everything. A promise made to a customer was broken. It was not the first time — and he knew it would not be the last. He could not accept that. So in 2005, Rick left and built something different.
High Efficiency Cooling & Heating started as a small Markham operation with a simple principle: do what you say, say what you do, and never compromise on quality. That meant only recommending what customers actually needed, using only the best equipment, and standing behind every installation.
Twenty years later, High Efficiency is a multi-year Carrier President's Award winner serving over 50,000 homeowners, condo residents, and commercial properties across the GTA. The team has grown. The trucks have multiplied. But the principle Rick started with in 2005 has not changed by a single word.
"The day a promise to a customer was broken was the day I knew I had to build something better."
— Rick Li, Founder
Meet Rick Li
Rick Li came to Canada in 1998. He and his wife arrived from China, and his first job here was writing software. It was steady work. It was not what he ended up doing.
A few years in, he moved into HVAC sales. He picked it up fast — good with people, quick on the technical side — and within two years he was one of the top salespeople at one of the GTA's biggest firms. Then he started noticing things. Customers nudged toward equipment they did not need. Repairs that should have cost a few hundred dollars turning into full replacements. Small promises quietly broken and never followed up on.
He left in 2005. Started High Efficiency out of Markham with a few people and one idea: tell customers the truth, do the work right, and the rest follows. A homeowner once called convinced her furnace was dead — she had quotes from three companies saying so. A High Efficiency technician fixed her furnace. She has been a customer for years. Rick still talks about that one.
He is not a technician. He runs the business, sets the standard, and spends a lot of time on job sites making sure it holds.
"I came here with nothing and had to figure it out twice. That makes you think differently about what you owe people."
— Rick Li, Founder