Bellaire and West University Place are their own cities surrounded by Houston, and Meyerland is a Houston neighborhood next to them; together they are the metro’s clearest case of new houses on old streets. Bellaire’s median build year is 1996 on a city platted in 1908, because the 1950s ranch houses have been torn down and replaced one lot at a time. West U is a fifth pre-1950 and a quarter 2000s for the same reason. Meyerland is 46% 1950s ranch houses, and it flooded in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
A Bellaire or West U house built since 1995 on a teardown lot is a large two- or three-story custom or semi-custom home on two, three or four systems, with new ductwork from the build — often metal trunks with flex branches, better than production work, and never opened since. The 1995-to-2005 ones are at twenty to thirty years and the first visit is an assessment; the 2010s ones are the first-cleaning window. Three-system houses are the top row of the pricing page, and every one of these vents the dryer through the roof, three stories up.
The surviving 1950s ranch houses on the same streets are the opposite: single-story, one system, original metal ducts that may be in fine shape at seventy years, flex branches added in some later decade that are not, and a plenum that has never been opened. Assessment.
Meyerland was built on rice fields in the 1950s along Brays Bayou, and Brays came up in the Memorial Day storm of 2015 — 2,500 to 3,000 homes, mostly here — again in the Tax Day storm of 2016, and catastrophically in Harvey. Something like 4,000 properties in the Brays floodplain flooded in those years. The houses that came back after 2018 were rebuilt elevated above base flood, which means they were rebuilt: new drywall, new everything, sometimes new ducts and sometimes the old attic system kept because the water never reached it. Project Brays and the Meyergrove detention basin finished in 2024 have changed the odds, but not the history.
So a Meyerland house has one of three duct stories: a new elevated rebuild with builder’s dust in new ducts; an original 1950s house that never flooded and has never had its ducts opened; or a house that was rebuilt in place with the attic system kept and three rebuilds’ worth of drywall dust in it. Say which. And the rule for any duct that was actually under water is the same as everywhere: replaced, never cleaned.
Assessment at twenty-two years; probably a cleaning with the runs checked. Top row of the pricing table, three roof dryer vents worth of ladder.
One post-construction cleaning if the registers blew dust after move-in. Otherwise nothing.
If the attic stayed dry, the ducts are seventy years old and full of three rebuilds. Assessment, and expect a mix of replacement and cleaning. If the attic ever got wet, replacement.
Ranges by systems and openings, with the licensed items separated.
Five reasons that hold up, six that do not.
Eight things a real job contains, and one household’s account of not getting them.
Part of the Inside the Loop & the Villages zone · every area
And the nearest cross streets. The contractor covering this zone quotes it in writing before anything is booked.
Call (346) 586-0541 Describe the Job
Houston Duct