Camera Duct Inspection & Air-Quality Assessment in San Antonio
See inside your ducts before you spend a dollar on cleaning.
01San Antonio — the housing record
What San Antonio actually has behind its walls.
Before anyone quotes a duct job here, this is the stock they are quoting against. It is public Census data, and it is different in every city we cover.
- Housing units
- 603,213
- Built pre-1980
- 30%
- Built 2000s
- 27%
- Built since 2010
- 14%
- Gas heat
- 29%
- Electric heat
- 70%
- Single-family
- 59%
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2023), tables B25034, B25040 and B25024. Percentages are rounded and describe the city, not your house.
What that means for ducts
Retrofit-era ductwork
About 30% of San Antonio's homes went up before 1980, which is before central air was designed into a house rather than added to it. Duct runs in that stock were threaded through attics and crawl spaces after the fact, often more than once, and the flex in them has had decades of Texas attic heat. Expect route surprises, expect joints that have worked loose, and expect a system nobody has opened.
That is a reading of the city’s stock, not a diagnosis of your home. Which of it applies to you is exactly what the camera settles — and why we would rather run one than quote from a postcode.
02Working in San Antonio
The part that changes from street to street.
San Antonio runs on electricity rather than gas. The large majority of homes heat with a heat pump or resistance strips, and with winters this short the system is effectively a cooling machine nine or ten months of the year. That concentrates wear and dust at the blower and the indoor coil rather than deep in the branch runs, and it is where we start. The second half of the picture is the inner loop. A substantial share of the housing inside 410 predates 1980, ducted through vented attics with thin insulation and served by a single return grille sized for a much smaller blower than anything sold today. Starved returns are the most common finding in those houses, and adding return area improves comfort and filtration more than a cleaning does. Outside the loop, pale limestone and caliche dust from ongoing construction gets pulled in wherever the return side leaks.
Mission San Jose
- Alamo Heights line ·
- Stone Oak ·
- Monte Vista ·
- King William ·
- The Dominion ·
- Alamo Ranch ·
- Terrell Hills line ·
- Southtown
County
Bexar County
Same standard in San Antonio as everywhere else.
Source removal to the NADCA ACR standard, a written quote before anything is touched, and camera photographs of your own runs before and after. We are not going to re-argue that on every city page — it is set out once, in full, on the service page.
- Photo documentation of every accessible supply and return run
- Written condition report with dust-load and moisture notes
- A clean-now, clean-partial, or not-yet verdict measured against EPA guidance
- Filtration and next-steps advice included at no extra charge
- From
- $99
- On site
- 60–90 minutes
- Scope
- 4 lines
Prices shown are starting estimates and may change with the condition, access, and scope we find on site. Only a written quote from an on-site visit is a price we commit to.
03Camera Duct Inspection & Air-Quality Assessment — in this stock
What a camera finds in older stock.
In a city this age the inspection is usually not answering "is it dusty". It is answering whether a run has separated in the attic, whether a previous retrofit left an unsealed takeoff pulling unconditioned air, and whether there is moisture history in the plenum. Those are findings that change what you should spend money on — and several of them mean a cleaning is the wrong purchase until the repair is done.
Is the $99 inspection just a setup for selling me a cleaning?
No — it's priced to stand on its own, and a meaningful share of inspections end with 'not yet.' You get photos, a written report, and a verdict measured against EPA's conditions. Plenty of customers use it to evaluate another company's quote, which we consider a perfectly good outcome..
What does the camera actually show?
Dust depth, debris, moisture staining, growth-suspect areas, torn liner, and crushed or disconnected runs — through every accessible supply and return plus both plenums. You watch the screen live as we go, so by the time the report arrives, you've already seen everything in it yourself..
04Book in San Antonio
Three fields, and a person calls you back.
Tell us the ZIP and we will tell you what your system likely needs — including, sometimes, that it needs nothing yet. Nothing is charged until you have approved a written quote.
05Questions
Asked in San Antonio, answered straight.
Is the $99 inspection just a setup for selling me a cleaning?
No — it's priced to stand on its own, and a meaningful share of inspections end with 'not yet.' You get photos, a written report, and a verdict measured against EPA's conditions. Plenty of customers use it to evaluate another company's quote, which we consider a perfectly good outcome.
What does the camera actually show?
Dust depth, debris, moisture staining, growth-suspect areas, torn liner, and crushed or disconnected runs — through every accessible supply and return plus both plenums. You watch the screen live as we go, so by the time the report arrives, you've already seen everything in it yourself.
Inside Loop 410 our house dates to 1962. What usually turns up?
In that stock the duct runs through a vented attic with thin insulation, served by returns sized for a much smaller blower. We commonly find a single undersized return grille starving the whole system. Adding return area improves comfort and filtration noticeably more than a cleaning of the branches would.
Heating barely runs here. Is my system really just an air conditioner?
Effectively yes, and it changes priorities. With mostly electric equipment and very short San Antonio winters, the blower and indoor coil see nine or ten months of runtime a year. That is where dust and moisture concentrate, and that is what we open first rather than the branch runs.
Fine pale dust settles on everything in our house. Is it coming from the ducts?
More often it is getting in through them. Limestone and caliche dust from construction and unpaved edges is drawn in wherever the return side leaks, then distributed through the house. Finding and sealing that leak is the durable fix. Cleaning without it just delays the same complaint by a season.
Camera Duct Inspection & Air-Quality Assessment nearby
Everything we do in San AntonioLast reviewed: