An HVAC inspection is a documentation service. It answers the question a home buyer, property manager, insurance underwriter, or HOA compliance officer is actually asking: what is the current condition of this system, what is the estimated remaining service life of its major components, are there any safety concerns, and what are the likely costs to address any identified deficiencies? It is not a tune-up — we do not perform corrective work during an inspection visit. The deliverable is a written report with photos that supports a decision, not a system brought up to optimal operating condition.
The distinction matters because the person commissioning an HVAC inspection is typically making a financial decision based on the findings. A home buyer who receives an HVAC inspection report documenting a 16-year-old furnace with overfire discoloration on the heat exchanger and a capacitor reading at 78% of nameplate is in a better negotiating position than one who received a tune-up that corrected both findings without documenting the pre-service condition. An honest inspection report is a negotiating tool; a tune-up is a service transaction.
The most common request for a standalone HVAC inspection comes from buyers under contract on a home in the south Salt Lake Valley who want a professional assessment of the HVAC system condition that goes beyond what a general home inspector provides. General home inspectors verify that heating and cooling systems operate at the time of inspection — they confirm the furnace fires and the AC cools. They do not perform combustion analysis to confirm the furnace is producing safe flue gas chemistry, borescope the heat exchanger on a 15-year-old furnace at SunCrest elevation where altitude derate errors have accelerated heat exchanger fatigue, or measure refrigerant charge by superheat and subcooling to confirm the cooling system is operating at rated capacity.
Our pre-purchase HVAC inspection provides all of these. For a buyer evaluating a home in the Draper or Sandy market where the seller has represented the HVAC system as “well maintained” without service records, the inspection tells you what condition the system is actually in — not what the seller believes it is in.
Property managers serving rental homes and HOA-managed properties in the south Salt Lake Valley periodically need documented HVAC condition assessments for:
A homeowner planning a significant home renovation — finishing a basement, adding a room, converting from propane to natural gas — often needs an HVAC inspection to determine whether the existing system can serve the expanded conditioned space or whether the renovation scope needs to include HVAC replacement or upgrade. We assess the existing system’s capacity relative to the post-renovation load calculation and document the findings so the renovation contractor and the homeowner are working from the same information.
Every HVAC inspection includes a CO safety assessment at the return air grille (measuring whether flue gas CO is entering the conditioned air circuit) and in ambient living areas. Findings are documented in a dedicated safety section of the inspection report. For homes with gas water heaters and gas fireplaces, we extend the CO assessment to those appliances as part of the inspection scope at no additional charge — a safe HVAC system assessment does not stop at the furnace.
Accessible duct sections are visually inspected for disconnected joints, compression damage to flex duct, missing insulation at air handler connections, and evidence of rodent intrusion or moisture damage. We do not perform a full duct system leak test as part of the standard inspection (this requires a blower door setup), but we note any obvious distribution deficiencies that would affect system performance or indoor air quality.
The HVAC inspection report is a written document structured for use in a real estate transaction, property management file, or insurance submission. It includes:
The report is provided to the commissioning party within 24 hours of the inspection in PDF format. For real estate transactions, we provide the report directly to the buyer’s agent on request for inclusion in the inspection contingency package.
A general home inspector charges $400–$700 for a comprehensive home inspection that includes the HVAC system. The HVAC component of a general home inspection typically takes 20–30 minutes and covers: does the furnace fire, does the AC cool, is the venting visually intact, are there obvious physical deficiencies. It does not cover: combustion chemistry (CO air-free, O₂), heat exchanger integrity by borescope, refrigerant charge by measurement, capacitor condition by microfarad test, or CO in the return air.
A standalone HVAC inspection from a licensed HVAC contractor takes 1.5–3 hours, uses calibrated instruments on every measurable parameter, and produces a report with instrument readings that supports negotiation on specific findings. For a home in our service area with a furnace over 12 years old and an AC system that has never had documented service, the information gap between a general home inspector’s HVAC pass and a licensed HVAC contractor’s full inspection is the difference between “the furnace fires” and “the furnace’s heat exchanger shows overfire discoloration consistent with a missing altitude derate, CO air-free is 145 ppm at low fire, and the borescope shows a hairline crack at the third cell outlet that correlates with 8 ppm CO at the return air grille.”
A buyer who catches that finding before close of escrow can negotiate a furnace replacement credit or a seller-funded replacement. A buyer who moves in with a general home inspector’s “passed HVAC” and discovers the CO finding in January has a different problem.
For pre-purchase HVAC inspections, property management assessments, or homeowner-requested condition documentation across Draper, Sandy, Bluffdale, Riverton, South Jordan, and Herriman, contact us to schedule an inspection visit. Reports are delivered within 24 hours in PDF format.