Indoor Air Quality and Humidity

Houston air carries as much water as heat, and an AC that cools the house without drying it leaves it feeling clammy at 72. Oversized systems do this: they hit the temperature quickly, switch off, and never run long enough to pull the moisture out. The result is a house that never quite feels comfortable, condensation on the ducts and registers, and the musty smell that means mould is growing somewhere in the air handler or the ducts.

The fixes range from the simple, a better filter and a cleaned coil, through a whole-house dehumidifier that works alongside the AC, to replacing an oversized system with a correctly sized or variable-speed one that runs longer and drier. Ultraviolet lights at the coil and media filters help in some houses and are sold hard in all of them, so ask what the specific problem is before buying the solution.

If someone in the house has asthma or allergies, or the smell when the system starts is sharp rather than merely musty, that is worth a proper look rather than another air freshener.

Whatever the problem turns out to be, the first step is the same: describe it, say where the house is, and one independent HVAC contractor working in your town contacts you to look at it. No charge for being connected, and no obligation once he has.