A house you cannot open is a house that needs its air brought in.
Heating, cooling and ventilation across Inglewood and the South Bay. A great many houses here are sealed — for noise, for weather, or because somebody put in new windows and nobody thought about the air. That is a solvable mechanical problem. It is also the one this trade is worst at explaining, so we wrote a page about it.
Cooling is not ventilation, and almost nobody says so
A central air conditioning system in a house moves the air that is already inside it around in a circle. Unless something has been deliberately installed to bring outdoor air in, it brings in none at all. That is not a fault — it is how the equipment works — but it means a well-sealed house with a perfectly good system can still have air nobody is happy with.
What we measure
Carbon dioxide logged over days rather than sampled once, because it is the cheapest honest proxy for whether enough outdoor air is arriving. Alongside it: the airflow at the registers, the static pressure, whether the extract fans move what they claim to, and where the building is leaking and where it is not.
What usually comes out of it
Very often the answer is small: a bathroom fan that has been disconnected in the attic for years, a kitchen extract that recirculates instead of venting, a dryer terminating into a crawl space. Those are cheap, and they are found by measuring rather than by looking.
What we will not claim
That any of it will fix somebody’s symptoms. We measure air and we install equipment. Whether a number means anything for a person’s breathing or sleep is a medical question, and we are not qualified to answer it. We will give you every reading we take.
Houses
Post-war single-storey stock across Morningside Park and north Inglewood, duplexes and four-unit buildings on almost every street, hillside additions in the Fairview area, and an unusual number of houses with replacement windows that do not open the way the originals did.
Add a climate mild enough that people used to live with the windows open all year, and you have the specific Inglewood problem: houses designed for natural ventilation that no longer get any.
Premises
Shopfronts along Market Street and La Brea, offices and medical suites on Manchester and Century, light industrial and storage toward the 405, and the restaurants and small kitchens that have multiplied since the stadiums opened.
Commercial work here carries an obligation residential work does not: outdoor air rates for occupied spaces are a code matter, they are measurable, and a landlord or a tenant can be asked to show them. We measure and document. We do not certify.
The house was sealed up, and now the air is wrong
Five things people notice, crossed with the four reasons a building ends up sealed — windows replaced for aircraft noise, a weatherisation retrofit, an apartment with shared corridors, or a house that simply never had mechanical ventilation. What to measure, what it usually turns out to be, and which parts of it are not a heating and cooling contractor’s to solve.
The work, plainly
- Diagnosis with instruments
Static pressure, airflow, refrigerant charge against the manufacturer’s target, temperature split, combustion analysis on anything that burns gas. Written down with the date and the conditions.
- Ventilation measurement
Carbon dioxide logged over days, extract fan flow rates measured rather than assumed, and the building’s leakage established rather than guessed at.
- Mechanical ventilation
Extract that actually extracts, supply ventilation where a house needs air brought in, and heat or energy recovery where the numbers justify it. Measured before and after.
- Repair, costed first
What it is, what it costs, and what it does not fix. Replacement is discussed after a repair has a number against it.
- Replacement and installation
Sized from a room-by-room load calculation on the building as it stands. Ducted, ductless or heat pump, chosen from the numbers.
- Ductwork
Leakage measured, joints sealed, attic runs insulated, returns and transfer grilles added, registers balanced against a measured target.
- Gas appliance safety
Combustion analysis, heat exchanger inspection, flue checked as installed. Carbon monoxide alarms fitted where there is a gas appliance and no working alarm.
- Planned maintenance
For houses and for premises, with the same readings every visit, so a slow change shows up as a change.
What we will not do
This list is here because the subject this site is built on attracts exactly the kind of selling we would rather not be mistaken for.
We do not make health claims
Not from a carbon dioxide reading, not from a particulate count, not from a humidity figure. We can tell you what the instrument measured and what it would cost to change it. What that means for anybody’s asthma, allergies, sleep or headaches is a doctor’s question.
We do not administer the airport sound programme
The residential sound insulation work around the airport is run by the airport authority and has its own rules, its own boundaries and its own timetable. We have nothing to do with it. We cannot tell you whether you qualify, what it covers, or whether it is still open — ask them directly, and be careful of anybody who implies they can.
We do not do mould testing or remediation
We will measure humidity and find the moisture source, because that is mechanical. Testing for mould, identifying it and removing it are an industrial hygienist’s and a remediation contractor’s work, and a contractor who offers to test and then sell you the cure has an obvious problem.
We do not replace windows
We will tell you plainly when a ventilation problem started with a window replacement, and we will solve it mechanically. Glazing, frames and acoustic glass are somebody else’s trade and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
We do not take sides between neighbours
In a duplex or a small apartment building, one resident’s extract is frequently another resident’s smell. We will measure it and write down what we found. We will not be either party’s witness, and we will not work on common parts without the owner’s authority.
We do not certify compliance
Outdoor air rates for occupied commercial spaces are a code matter and they are measurable. We will measure them and give you the figures with the date and the method. Whether the result satisfies an obligation is for a code official or an engineer to say.
Asked often enough to write down
Does my air conditioning bring in fresh air?
Almost certainly not, and this is the single most useful thing to understand about a sealed house. A central system in a house recirculates the air that is already inside it and introduces no outdoor air at all unless something has been deliberately installed to do that. It is not a fault, it is how the equipment works. What it means is that a well-sealed house with a perfectly good system can still have air nobody is happy with, and no amount of servicing the equipment changes it.
Our windows were replaced because of the aircraft noise and now the house feels stuffy. Is that connected?
Very probably. Older houses here ventilated through their windows and their leaks, and they did it well enough that nobody had to think about it. Replace the windows, add air conditioning so closed windows become normal, and the building loses the only ventilation it ever had. The fix is mechanical and it is a solvable problem. Worth checking first is whether anything was installed at the time, which is a matter of what is actually there rather than what anybody remembers, and takes minutes to establish.
Are you part of the airport sound insulation programme?
No, and we have nothing to do with it. That work is run by the airport authority, with its own boundaries, rules and timetable, and we cannot tell you whether you qualify, what it covers, or whether it is still open. Ask them directly, and be careful of anybody in this trade who implies they can answer for them. What we can do is the mechanical ventilation work, whether or not any programme is involved.
Would an air purifier fix it?
It depends entirely on what is actually wrong, which is why we measure first. A filter removes particles from the air already in the room. It does not bring in any outdoor air, does not reduce carbon dioxide and does not remove moisture, so if the problem is stale air, condensation or lingering smells, filtration is not the answer to it. Better filtration also costs airflow, and on a system already short of it that trade is real, so we measure the static pressure before and after. What we will not do is sell you a device on the strength of how somebody feels.
What does a week of logging actually tell you?
The shape of the problem. A carbon dioxide logger left where people actually are, through the nights and the closed-up afternoons, shows whether this is a ventilation problem at all and which hours it happens in. Very often it shows the trouble is one room and six or seven hours long, which is a far smaller and cheaper problem than the one everybody assumed. A single reading taken while a contractor is standing in the room is the least useful number available.
We are in an apartment. Can you help?
Inside your own unit, yes, and it is worth doing: the extract fans measured and made to work, the return path between rooms sorted out, duct leakage established, and a week of logging. What we cannot do is fix a building from inside one apartment. Corridor pressurisation, shared shafts and what your neighbours are doing are decided outside your front door, and we will not work on common parts on one resident’s instruction. The measurements are still worth having — a dated figure is what a managing agent has to answer.
Which areas do you cover?
Inglewood, Lennox, Hawthorne, Westchester, Lawndale, Ladera Heights, El Segundo and View Park.
3213 W Imperial Hwy
Inglewood, CA 90303. Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.
We cover Inglewood, Lennox, Hawthorne, Westchester, Lawndale, Ladera Heights, El Segundo and View Park.