Indoor Air Quality

Indoor Air Quality Assessment in Portland, Oregon

Constant dust, allergies that are worse indoors than out, or a stale smell when the system kicks on. Usually there is a mechanical explanation, and it is usually findable.

Why Assess

Dust that keeps coming back is coming from somewhere.

If you are dusting surfaces every few days and it makes no difference, the filter in your system is not catching what it should — or air is getting past it entirely. Both are common, and neither is obvious from looking at the thermostat.

The usual causes are unglamorous. A filter of the wrong size, sitting loose in an oversized slot, so a good share of the air goes around the edges instead of through the media. A return that leaks. Ductwork with open joints pulling air from a crawlspace or an attic. A filter rated far higher than the equipment can tolerate, choking airflow without improving much.

None of that is diagnosed from a catalogue. It is diagnosed by someone opening the thing up and looking.

Budget Heating and Cooling technician inspecting an HVAC filter and return in a Portland home

What We Look At

Six things, and none of them are guesswork.

This is a hands-on inspection of your filtration and the system around it.

1
The filter itself
Size, rating, condition, and how long it has plainly been in there. A filter that is grey and bowed has been doing its job for too long.
2
How it sits in the slot
A filter loose in its housing lets air travel around the edge rather than through it. This is one of the most common problems we find and one of the cheapest to correct.
3
The return
Where the system draws its air from, and whether it is drawing any of it from somewhere you would rather it did not.
4
Accessible ductwork
Visible joints, obvious leaks, and disconnected sections in the spaces we can actually reach. We tell you what we can see, and we say so when a run is not accessible.
5
What the equipment can tolerate
A higher-rated filter is not automatically better. A system designed for modest resistance will lose airflow if you fit a dense filter to it, and losing airflow causes its own problems.
6
Whether the setup matches the house
Pets, allergies, a woodstove, a remodel that added rooms to an existing system — all of it changes what the filtration ought to be doing.

Being Straight With You

This is an inspection, not a lab test.

We do not sample your air or test it for specific contaminants. Plenty of companies will imply that they do. What we do is look at the equipment that is supposed to be cleaning your air and tell you, plainly, where it is falling short.

For most homes that is the answer anyway, because most indoor dust complaints trace back to filtration and duct problems rather than to anything exotic. If we think your situation genuinely needs testing that we do not perform, we will say so rather than sell you something adjacent to it.

Told what we found. Not what sells.

Related Services

Everything we do with indoor air.

System Assessment

Indoor Air Quality Assessment

A technician looks at the filter, the return, the ductwork and whatever filtration is already fitted, and tells you what is actually letting dust through.

Installed Equipment

Air Purification & Filtration

Whole-house Honeywell air cleaners fitted into the ductwork — a media cabinet or an electronic cleaner, matched to what your system can move air through.

Routine Replacement

HVAC Filter Replacement

The right filter, fitted correctly, in a system that can tolerate it — once, or on a schedule we keep so you don't have to.

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Dusting twice a week? Let's find out why.

Filtration and duct inspections across the greater Portland metro area. Mon–Fri 8–5, emergency service outside business hours.

(503) 312-3460