If your registers are in the floor, the ducts are in the slab
Heating, cooling and ventilation across League City, Clear Lake and the Bay Area. A great deal of the housing here was built with the ductwork cast into the concrete, in a place with a high water table and a serious hurricane history. That combination decides what is worth doing long before anybody looks at the equipment.
Repair, replacement, ductwork, ventilation and surveys
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Diagnosis and repair
No cooling in August, short cycling, a tripping breaker, a drain overflowing. Found, explained and priced before anything is fitted, with the repair figure given separately from any replacement figure.
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Under-slab duct assessment
Camera, airflow and moisture, on the ducts you cannot see. The only honest way to decide between leaving a system alone, lining it, or abandoning it and running overhead.
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Overhead duct systems
Where an under-slab system has to be abandoned, a properly designed attic system to replace it — routed, sized and sealed, not fitted into whatever space is left at the end.
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Replacement, sized by calculation
A room-by-room load calculation before a size is named, with the humidity load taken seriously. In this climate an oversized system cools without drying and leaves a house cold and clammy.
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Ventilation and extraction
Bathroom and kitchen extraction that reaches outside rather than the attic, outside air where the building code requires it, and make-up air where a hood is pulling a building into a vacuum.
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Service and planned maintenance
Coils, drains proved rather than glanced at, filters, electrical connections, charge against the manufacturer’s target and combustion, with the readings recorded so years can be compared.
You cannot clean your way out of a duct in the ground
Five things people notice at a floor register, four things they were planning to do about it, and a straight answer for each — including a plain account of why the thing almost everybody asks for first is usually the wrong answer.
Both, and neither is an afterthought
Houses, duplexes and rental property
Older houses with floor registers, newer two-storey builds on the edges, duplexes and rentals managed from elsewhere. A system that has failed in the heat, a house that is cold and sticky, a musty smell nobody can place, or a survey before you buy.
Where a house has under-slab ductwork we say so on the first visit, in writing, because it changes every subsequent decision and buyers are rarely told.
Offices, clinics, shops and light industrial
Offices and professional suites, medical and dental practices, shops along the main roads, workshops and light industrial units, and the office buildings on yards and sites around the bay.
Rooftop packaged units, splits and ductless, on schedules that fit a trading week, with a written record per unit and condition surveys per site.
High water table, flat ground, and sixty years of concrete
An under-slab duct is a passage through the ground. Where the water table is high and the ground is flat, groundwater finds it — through a joint that has settled, a section that has corroded, or a crack that opened decades ago. Once it has, the system is carrying air across standing water and whatever grows in it, into every room.
That is not a reason to panic. Plenty of these systems are dry and sound and will outlive their owners. It is a reason to look properly, once, and write down what is actually there.
Asked most weeks
Our registers are in the floor. Is that a problem?
Not in itself, and a great many of those systems are dry, sound and will outlast their owners. What it means is that your ductwork is cast into the slab, which is the one part of a house nobody can see and the one part that is expensive to be wrong about. On flat ground with a high water table, a joint that has settled or a section that has corroded lets groundwater in, and after that the system is moving air across whatever is standing in those runs. The honest answer is to put a camera down three or four runs once, including the lowest ones, and write down what is actually there.
Should we have the under-slab ducts cleaned?
Usually not, and we do not offer duct cleaning at all, so we have nothing to gain from saying so. Three reasons. It does not address water — if groundwater is entering through a failed joint, removing what is in there today changes nothing about tomorrow. It can make a failing duct worse, because brushing or high-pressure air in a run that has already corroded or partly collapsed can open it further, and nobody can inspect the result from above. And it is sold on a fear that is easy to create and hard to disprove. Get a camera down the runs first and decide from what is on the screen; the honest options after that are lining, partial replacement or abandoning them and running overhead.
What are the options if the ducts under the slab have failed?
Three, and the right one depends entirely on what the camera shows. Lining or sealing the existing runs, which needs the duct to be intact enough to line and needs the water to have stopped entering first. Partial replacement where one or two runs are the problem and the rest are sound. Or abandoning the under-slab system and running a new one overhead, which is the most disruptive and frequently the most honest long-term answer — it means attic space, some soffits or bulkheads, sealing the old openings properly, and designing the new distribution rather than fitting it around what is left. Ask to see the proposed routes drawn before agreeing a price.
The house is cold but still feels sticky. What is wrong?
Two free things to check before anybody prices equipment. If your thermostat fan is set to on rather than auto, change it — running the blower between cycles re-evaporates the water sitting on the coil straight back into the house, and in this climate it is the commonest self-inflicted humidity problem there is. Then time the cycles on a hot afternoon: twenty to thirty minute runs are healthy, and ten on and ten off repeatedly means the system satisfies the thermostat before it has dried anything. That is an oversizing symptom, and a larger machine makes it worse rather than better.
Do you do duct cleaning, mould work or cold rooms?
No to all three, and we say so before anybody drives out. Duct cleaning we do not offer at all. Mould testing and removal is an assessor’s and a remediation contractor’s work and in Texas is a licensed field of its own — what we do is find and fix the moisture source, which is the part that settles it. Commercial refrigeration is a different trade with different equipment, refrigerants and certification. We also do not break slabs; where an under-slab duct has to be opened that is a concrete contractor’s job and we will coordinate rather than quote for it.
Which areas do you cover?
League City, Clear Lake, Webster, Friendswood, Dickinson, Kemah, Seabrook and Texas City.
League City and the Bay Area
League City, Clear Lake, Webster, Friendswood, Dickinson, Kemah, Seabrook and Texas City. Outside that, ask — it depends on the week rather than on a boundary.
(281) 270-7719, Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 5pm.