Indoor air quality in Washington DC
Dust that comes back the day after you clean, air too dry to sleep in, a smell you cannot place. Often fixable without touching the heating or cooling equipment at all.
- Diagnostic fee
- $89
- Typical total
- $200 – $900
- Usual response
- Next day
- On site
- 1 – 3 hours
At a glance
Equipment carries the manufacturer warranty
What we usually find
Dust settling again within a day
Usually leaky return ductwork pulling air from a basement or crawlspace and redistributing it through the house. Sealing the returns does more than any filter will.
$300 – $1,400 typical
Dry air, static and cracked lips in winter
DC winters run well below comfortable humidity indoors. A whole-house humidifier tied into the furnace fixes it in a way that a bedroom unit never quite does.
$450 – $1,100 typical
Damp, musty summer air
An oversized AC cools the house fast and shuts off before it has dehumidified anything. Sometimes a control change, sometimes a whole-house dehumidifier, occasionally the wrong equipment for the house.
$250 – $2,200 typical
Allergies worse indoors than out
A better filter is the first step, but a filter thick enough to catch pollen can choke a system not designed for it. Static pressure gets measured before anything gets upgraded.
$200 – $800 typical
A smell when the system runs
Musty means moisture in the coil or ducts. Burning is dust on the heat exchanger for the first run of autumn. Anything sharp or chemical is worth treating as urgent.
$180 – $700 typical
One room always stuffy
Airflow, not air quality — a crushed flex duct, a closed damper, or no return path from a room whose door stays shut.
$180 – $900 typical
Try these first — they’re free
Genuinely. Three of these fix the problem often enough that we’d rather tell you than take your $89.
- 01Change the filter, and check you are not using one denser than the system was designed for
- 02Open interior doors, or leave a gap at the bottom, so rooms have a return path
- 03Run the fan on AUTO rather than ON in summer — constant fan re-evaporates moisture off the coil
- 04Check that bathroom and kitchen extractors actually vent outside, not into the attic
Still not sorted?
Request in the app and a verified company usually accepts within a few minutes.
Ranges are indicative of the DC market, not quotes, and not yet drawn from completed NovaAir jobs. Your price is whatever the technician quotes for your system, and you approve it before any work starts.