Seven Zones of the Houston Metro, Each With Its Own Duct Story

Build Era Is the Variable

Harris County’s median home was built in 1988, and more than half the county’s houses predate 1990 — the 1970s and 1980s together are a third of the stock. Fort Bend and Montgomery counties’ medians are 2005 and 2004, and in the fast-growing edges like Fulshear and Conroe the majority was built after 2010. Flex duct is rated for fifteen to twenty-five years. So the metro sorts itself: an inner ring of houses on original 1970s and 1980s ductwork that has rarely been opened, a middle ring of 1990s and 2000s two-story homes on first-generation flex now crossing twenty years, and an outer ring of new construction where the only duct question is whether the builder’s dust ever came out.

Then the floods. Allison, the Memorial Day and Tax Day storms, Harvey, Imelda, and the 2024 derecho and Beryl each put water and roof damage into specific parts of the metro, and a flooded attic system is a replacement conversation, not a cleaning. Each area page says which of those events reached it.

Not listed: the Sugar Land sub-neighborhoods, which get one page as a city, and the far edges — Galveston Island, Brenham, Huntsville — which are covered on request but forty miles from the nearest zone’s contractor.