How Tresha in a New Guntersville Home With COPD Now Breathes Easier inside her home

When Tresha moved into her newly built Guntersville home, breathing felt harder inside than out. By testing her indoor air, identifying poor filtration and lack of controlled fresh air, then designing

Quick Summary

Within the first year of living in her newly built home in Guntersville, Tresha, who has COPD and severe allergies, noticed that breathing indoors was often harder than being outside. Our air-quality testing showed poor filtration performance and no controlled source of fresh air, which meant the air in her “new” home wasn’t being cleaned or diluted the way it should be. After upgrading her filtration and adding a proper fresh air strategy, follow‑up testing showed a clear reduction in airborne contaminants, and Tresha reports she’s breathing easier and is no longer losing her voice like she was before.

• Newly Built ~1500sqft home
  Direct quote from Tresha-
  “…I just felt like that as long as I lived here, I have been sick. I just could not breathe well in my home”
  “with my COPD I would literally have gotten to where I, I just couldn’t breathe. I’d stay on that inhaler all the time.”
• Measured Reduction in particles in the air
• Measured reduction in CO2 in the air
  Direct quote from Tresha-
  “From before till now, it has improved 150%. The way I can breathe. The cleanness of my home. I don’t see dust bunny sitting around everywhere now.”
  “I would recommend it to anybody. I don’t care who they are. I, even if I didn’t like them, I would recommend it.”

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The Home & The Problem

Tresha had this home built in early 2025. Roughly 1500sqft on a tall crawlspace foundation with spray foam insulation in Guntersville, AL. With a 3Ton A/C, 70kbtu gas furnace package unit. From the looks you would suspect no issues at all as it’s a very nice looking house and very clean inside.

Since she moved in she has had a few issues-

• Excessive dust
• Difficulty breathing, worse than before moving
• Loose her voice often

She even tried buying a room air purifier that had an air quality sensor. Which she said it seemed to help but not 100% and it only seemingly helped the room it was in.

Now you would assume the next step in this story is she started calling around, found us, and wanted help with these issues. She actually didn’t know this was something that could be fixed. She actually called us to claim our at the time $19 Heating check up promo. As she felt the quality of the work that went into the home wasn’t very good she wanted assurance that her heating system was working properly.

One thing that makes us different than any other HVAC contractor around is we actually take a holistic approach to all problems with your house. Even though I was there just to make sure the heat was working, which it was, we still want to back up, zoom out, and ask if there are any other problems we should know about. It didn’t take many questions to begin to uncover the issues she’s been experiencing and how she didn’t feel there was a real fix to these common problems.

Here is her words for what she was experiencing:

“I could run a dust mop over the floor, and by the time I got through the house, They would be dust bunnies as big as my first round on my finger. Just sitting everywhere. You could, I couldn’t get rid of the dust. And I have COPD and I couldn’t breathe. And it seemed like I was constantly having Allergy reactions”

“I just felt like that as long as I lived here, since I moved from Tennessee. I have been sick.”

“I’d stay on that inhaler all the time.”

“I just could not breathe well in my home. I have never had this problem before.”

Testing & What I found

After some testing I was able to determine a few things. The current filtration was very inadequate with no means of bringing in fresh air for a very airtight home. The current ductwork wouldn’t support the upgrades and would need modification. Here were what we measured-

• PM 2.5 (particles that are in the air)
• tVOCs (Chemicals that are in the air. If you can smell it, its a VOC)
• CO2 (Carbon Dioxide)
• NOx (Nitrogen Oxides, harmful byproducts from burning gas)
• Temperature
• Humidity
• CO (Carbon Monoxide for when the ventless fireplace was running)
• Measured up to 14ppm being emitted this can be extremely harmful for an air tight house with no means of fresh air.
• Duct Pressure of the HVAC (The air pressure inside the duct)

• Measured at 0.44” Max limit is 0.58”
• 0.44” is actually surprisingly low (great thing) as I typically find them 0.65-1.0” (very bad)
• Filter Pressure Drop (how restrictive of airflow the filter is)
• Measured Filter Drop of 0.13” but only a Merv 8

Duct Pressure and Filter Pressure Drop

Measuring up to 14 parts per million of CO being emitted from the gas fireplace while running.

Our Design Plan

For our design here were our goals were to turn the HVAC system into an air cleaner by custom building a solution to improve filtration, bring in fresh air (as needed), and use automation to actively keep the air clean.

Goals:

• Go from Merv 8 filtration ~20% capture effecienty to Merv 16 <95% Capture (of 3 Micron or smaller particles)
• Go from no means of fresh air to being able to bring in fresh air, filter it, heat/cool it, and disperse throughout house
• Use monitoring and a controller to be able to actively bring in fresh air and filter the air as needed.

Implementation Step by Step

I proposed a few options with pricing and after she made her selection, here is exactly what I did-

1. Installed an Indoor Air Quality Monitor to begin gathering data of how the home currently operates. This helps to ensure what we did actually helps.
2. Based on the tests and measurements taken of the HVAC system I redesigned the filtration setup and whole return duct to properly accept the changes we would be making.
3. Using that information, I built out a filtration system with a large Merv 16 filter and a fresh air intake. This intake will be 8 inches with a motorized damper that can control the flow of fresh air as needed.
4. Removed the whole return duct from the old system. Installed a fresh air hood going through the foundation block, connected the foundation hood to the fresh air intake on the new filtration system, and upsized the return duct from 16 inches up to 20 inches.
5. Increasing the return duct size is extremely critical here, we’re trying to lower the duct pressure to serve a few purposes. To avoid straining the HVAC’s blower motor by making it overwork during high-pressure situations and want to keep the air moving slowly so when it hits the filter, the filter can catch things out of the air better.

5. Pulled control wires for the outside air damper and the HVAC blower, and wired them into the new system controller.
6. Brought the controller online and set up all automations as below-

1. If particles inside the space rise above the good range to kick the blower on to circulate air in the house, to filter, and bring those down.
2. If CO2 rises inside the house, open the outside air damper, bring on the indoor blower, and add fresh air into the house until it brings the CO2 levels down.
3. If TVOCs rise inside the house, open the outside air damper, bring on the indoor blower, and add fresh air into the house until it brings those TVOCs down.
4. These automations also will not trigger if the outside air is either too dirty, too hot, too cold, or too humid.

7. Lastly, do a final test to make sure everything was operating properly and within the design specifications that I was intending for.
8. Although I did come to find that the current thermostat being used was not going to be compatible with the controls we used. We did have to come back and replace the thermostat at a later date.

Old return duct: very standard looking, nothing major sticking out, just not the best design.

Fresh air duct with a damper, controller, and large media filter with the enlarged return duct from 16 to 20 inches.

Before and after picture

Measured Results

This is what separates the doers from the sayers. Measuring afterward and proving what you’ve done actually made a difference is the key. Anecdotal evidence is great, but it’s also the least credible for means of proving something was actually done. It’s also the fun part to get to see if what you anticipated happening actually happened. Here are the measurements that we took and what improvements we actually saw:

Even after going to a MERV 16 filter, we were still able to drop the duct pressure down considerably. while also keeping the pressure drop low and right within target.

Now, this just means that what we installed is going to operate properly within the system and not cause any undue strain. This next section is where the real proof comes in-

Before Improvements Made

PM 2.5 readings before work completed

CO2 reading before work completed

PM 2.5 & CO2 Overlayed together before work completed

Key things noted

• PM 2.5 normalized at close to the “fair” range and when spikes would happen it could sometimes take 6+ hours to come back down
• CO2 stayed on the line of “fair” in the range of 750-900 ppm
• Elevated CO2 and very slow rebound of PM 2.5 spikes

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After Improvements Made

PM 2.5 Readings After Work Completed

CO2 readings After work completed.

Full timeline of before work completed and after work completed.

Full timeline of before work completed and after work completed.

Key things noted

• A clear decrease in PM 2.5 and CO2
• When PM 2.5 spikes it quickly rebounds vs staying elevated for hours
• CO2 now staying within 450-550 ppm vs 750-900ppm

Life in the Home After the Fix

Now she has been living with these improvements for a few weeks at this point and has stated in noting a big improvement to her breathing* and major dust reduction.

*This isn’t a claim to cure a medical issue, this is anecdotal evidence to the results of making the air that you breathe in your home cleaner.

What Tresha Says

“I was very glad to see you on Facebook. And I was glad that I called you. You have been very, very, very helpful in explaining everything. That you will was going to do and how it was supposed to affect the house and me.”

“Compared to what From before till now, it has improved 150%. The way I feel. The way I can breathe. The cleanness of my home. I don’t see dust bunny sitting around everywhere now. And there’s just, I just can’t put into words how much better it is.”

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