Southwest Florida experiences constant heat and high humidity, both of which can negatively impact your home’s performance and comfort. When your home is always muggy, mold has exactly what it needs to grow. Excess humidity and mold are often caused by issues with a home’s construction and HVAC systems, and we can help get to the bottom of it.
Our third-party testing and diagnostics company in Sarasota is certified by the National Comfort Institute (NCI), the National Organization of Remediators and Microbial Inspectors (NORMI), and the National Air Duct Cleaners Association (NADCA). We offer comprehensive, unbiased reports about your home’s performance, covering everything from air leakages to HVAC inefficiencies. We don’t perform repairs or remediation ourselves, so you can trust us to provide honest and unbiased findings and recommendations supported by data, not assumptions.
Florida families come to us when they start noticing the following problems in their home:
When these problems don’t go away, even with constant AC usage, it’s likely a deeper problem with the home.
Most homeowners in this situation have already been told to buy a dehumidifier or run the AC longer. Sometimes that helps, but more often it treats a symptom while the actual cause (air leakage, negative pressure, a duct system pulling humid attic air) is left untouched.
Most duct systems leak. In many homes, 20–40% of the air moving through the system never reaches the living space. Instead, it’s lost into attics, walls, or crawlspaces, allowing heat and humidity to persist no matter how much you turn down the thermostat on your AC.
At Building Performance Solutions, we use the Energy Conservatory Duct Blaster® method to precisely measure duct leakage and identify where your system is failing. With this information, we suggest strategic improvements to help you seal your ductwork, reduce uncomfortable temperatures and humidity, and tackle the mold or indoor air quality problems you may be facing.
Your home is not as airtight as you think. Air is constantly leaking in and out through gaps in the building, bringing in heat, humidity, dust, and contaminants. These hidden leaks can reduce comfort, lower indoor air quality, and make it harder for your HVAC system to keep up.
At Building Performance Solutions, we use professional blower door testing to quantify exactly how your home is performing, and more importantly, how to improve it. During this test, we:
The result is a clear, measurable understanding of how “tight” or “leaky” your home is.
(Leakier isn’t automatically worse, either. Some homes are sealed too tightly and don’t exchange enough air, which creates its own air quality problems. In Florida, the goal isn’t maximum tightness; it’s controlled airflow and humidity you can actually manage.)
Humidity and moisture are often the root cause behind mold, comfort issues, and indoor air quality problems. Diagnosing where moisture is located and how much is present is an important step in home performance testing.
Our diagnostic approach uses moisture meters, relative humidity and temperature profiling, dew point analysis, and infrared imaging to identify thermal anomalies. Once we’ve identified that there is a moisture problem, we use our duct leakage, blower door, and HVAC analysis tests to find out why.
Most HVAC systems are never actually tested. They’re sized, installed, and assumed to work.
But if the airflow of your air conditioning system is wrong, then your system cannot dehumidify properly, which is how an AC problem becomes a humidity problem, and then a mold problem. Building Performance Solutions conducts HVAC performance testing using the TrueFlow system by The Energy Conservatory (TEC) to measure what your system is actually doing.
The TrueFlow grid is temporarily installed in place of your air filter to directly measure total system airflow at the air handler. We collect the same type of data used in National Comfort Institute (NCI) performance-based diagnostics and perform a full system analysis that measures:
During an initial home assessment, we do a walk through with you to figure out which specific tests we should run. Then, using all the information we collected in our tests, we provide you with a detailed report on why your home is suffering from comfort and performance issues, and what you can do to fix it. We provide photos of system issues, a straightforward explanation of what’s wrong, and professional recommendations for correction.
While we don’t perform any repair work, we’re more than happy to recommend you to a skilled and vetted contractor. Our reports are color-coded and split into two sections: plain-language findings for you, and the specific protocols your contractor needs to resolve the issues.
That report is also what lets you evaluate the people who bid the work. You’ll walk into those conversations already knowing what needs to be done, whether you use your current HVAC company or someone new.
In addition, we offer home performance testing for new construction. Whether you need to verify performance for occupancy, or you’ve suffered multiple HVAC system failures in your portfolio and need to find out why, we’re the experts builders and investors count on.
Even brand-new ductwork can leak badly, and during construction is the best time to correct it. Our methods are the same ones referenced by Energy Star, the Florida Energy Code, and RESNET/HERS ratings, so the numbers hold up for code compliance and occupancy verification.
Building Performance Solutions is backed by over three decades of real-world experience in the HVAC and indoor air quality industry. We understand the problems that homes face and use our expertise to find solutions to the most challenging comfort and performance problems. We are:
Trusted and relied upon by families with health sensitivities, and experienced with managing specific illnesses like CIRS.