Carbon Monoxide Testing, the Off Duty Way.
Carbon monoxide earns its reputation the hard way: colorless, odorless, produced by any fuel that burns incompletely, and dangerous in concentrations no human sense detects. Testing is the instrument answer, combustion equipment analyzed at the source, living spaces verified, alarm coverage assessed, and it belongs on the calendar of every house where anything burns.
Indoor Air Quality · Burnet & Central Texas
The Gas You Cannot Argue With
The CO conversation deserves directness: the gas kills at high concentrations and quietly sickens at chronic low ones, headaches, fatigue, and flu-without-fever patterns that households attribute to everything else, and its sources are ordinary equipment being ordinary, gas furnaces and water heaters with aging heat exchangers or disturbed venting, ranges and ovens running rich, fireplaces drafting badly, garages sharing air with living space, generators run too close in outage weather, the Texas storm-season classic that emergency rooms know by season. None of it detectable by nose or intuition, all of it measurable in minutes with the right instruments, which is the entire case for testing as a scheduled discipline rather than an after-incident regret.
The testing visit works source-first: every combustion appliance analyzed at its flue with the combustion analyzer, the instrument reading what the burn actually produces, CO in the exhaust stream flagging rich burns, cracked exchangers, and venting failures before they flag themselves in the living space, draft and spillage verified at each vent connection, since perfectly clean combustion spilling indoors is the same emergency by a different road, ambient levels then read through the house, sleeping areas prioritized, and the alarm layer assessed honestly, presence, placement, and age, CO alarms expire by design and their end-of-life dates go famously unread. Findings land plainly: what is burning clean, what is drifting, what needs repair now, and where the alarm coverage falls short of where your family sleeps.
Repairs route to their trades honestly, combustion and venting fixes ours and quoted straight, gas-line and appliance-internal work referred where licensing draws the lane, and retesting after any fix proves the number rather than assuming it.
Everything about this service gets tuned to where you live. The same failure looks different in a lakefront place at Horseshoe Bay, a nineties ranch house outside Bertram, and a five-year-old build in Leander, because humidity exposure, duct design, and equipment grade differ at each address. Ten years of CO testing calls across Burnet County and the corridor mean we usually know the local pattern before the panel comes off: what the builder-grade systems in the new subdivisions do at year five, what lake air does to outdoor coils, and what a Hill Country attic does to anything asked to work inside it in August.
Indoor Air Quality
The CO Test, Point by Point
What instrument-grade carbon monoxide verification covers in a residential visit.
Combustion analyzed at every source
Furnaces, water heaters, and fuel appliances read at the flue, the burn’s actual chemistry on the meter.
Draft and spillage verified
Vent connectors and draft hoods tested for the backflow that puts clean exhaust in dirty places.
Ambient levels through the house
Living and sleeping spaces read, since the only acceptable indoor number rounds to zero.
Garage-to-house pathways checked
The attached garage’s air-sharing honesty, door seals, shared returns, the classic quiet route.
Alarm coverage assessed
Presence, placement, and expiration read against where the household actually sleeps.
Findings in plain language
What is clean, what is drifting, what needs fixing now, ranked without drama or dismissal.
Not sure this is your problem?
Call anyway. We name the likely cause on the phone for free, and if it turns out to be something small you can handle yourself, we say exactly that and save you the visit.
Why Off Duty
When to Test, and the Alarm Truth
The calendar writes itself from the risk moments: annually with heating service for any fuel-burning house, the furnace’s first cold-season firing being the classic drift window; at purchase for any home with combustion history, since the inspection industry’s CO attention is a checkbox at best; after any venting, roofing, or remodel work near flue paths, the disturbed-venting cases arriving predictably behind construction; when symptoms whisper, the headaches-at-home pattern that clears elsewhere deserving instruments rather than dismissal; and immediately upon any alarm event, after evacuation, with the fire department’s all-clear followed by the source-hunt the responders’ portable meters begin but rarely finish. Storm season adds its own bulletin: generators kill Texans every outage year, distance and placement rules are absolute, and the testing conversation includes them whenever a transfer switch or extension cord history surfaces.
The alarm layer gets its own honesty because the devices are misunderstood: CO alarms are expiring instruments, five-to-ten-year sensors with end-of-life dates printed where nobody looks, placement matters, sleeping areas above all, and the bargain-tier devices’ sensitivity spread justifies the modest upgrade to listed quality units, all of which the assessment states plainly with dates read off your actual devices. Alarms are the last line; the tested-clean combustion equipment ahead of them is the real protection, and the visit delivers both layers checked.
The process here never changes, whether the job is CO testing or a full system swap. Step one, you call (512) 925-3090 and a human answers, around the clock. Step two, we test until the real cause is proven, because parts-swapping on a hunch is how invoices grow. Step three, you get the failure, the fix, and the exact number explained to the point before we touch a thing. Step four, we do the work to spec and prove it under load before we leave. Our customers keep writing reviews about exactly this rhythm, which tells us to keep it.
On pricing, the policy is the same as everything else here: out loud and up front. The visit cost gets stated on the phone before anyone drives anywhere. The repair price gets stated after diagnosis and before work. No packages with hidden contents, no commission-driven upsell in the truck, and no number on the invoice you did not already hear.
A word about waiting it out. Central Texas weather does not leave much grace period, and a system limping in May is a system down in July, when everyone else’s is down too and the schedule is at its tightest. The early call gets the easy appointment and, usually, the smaller invoice. The July call gets the queue. Texas rewards the prepared, and so does our schedule.
Who does the work matters as much as what gets done. Off Duty is owner-operated: the person diagnosing your system is the person whose name carries the company, trained in the family trade and seasoned by ten years of Central Texas installs and repairs. You can see the standard in real job photos, and you will see it again in your own equipment closet.
Coverage is the same as everything else we do: Burnet at the center, about 100 miles in every direction. That means the lake towns, Marble Falls, Kingsland, Horseshoe Bay, the corridor through Leander, Cedar Park, and Georgetown, plus Austin, Bell County, and the outer ring through Waco, San Marcos, New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, and Boerne. The full sixteen-county list lives on the service areas page, and if you sit just past the edge of it, call anyway and get an honest answer.
Diamond Contractor
Mitsubishi’s top ductless credential, earned with factory training.
Second Generation
Raised in the trade, ten years on the tools before the name went on a truck.
Warranty Authorized
JB and Mitsubishi warranty work: we file the claim, you skip the fight.
Open 24 Hours
A real person answers the phone at any hour, every day of the year.
The Standard
How This Work Gets Done Here
Here is the standard this work gets held to, spelled out. First, no guessing: the cause is proven with gauges, meters, and eyes on the actual equipment before a single part is recommended. Second, no padding: the fix that goes on the quote is the fix the system needs, sized and specced properly, with no mystery add-ons riding along. Third, no shortcuts: torque specs, code clearances, and manufacturer procedure all get followed even where nobody will ever look, because that is precisely where corners usually get cut.
And when it is done, it gets proven. Systems get run under real load, temperatures and pressures get checked against spec, and the numbers get recorded so the next visit starts from data instead of memory. You get the plain-English version of what was done and why, the workspace gets cleaned, and the price on the invoice is the price you heard before the work began. Hold us to all of it. Our neighbors in the reviews already do.
Carbon Monoxide Testing Questions
Asked Before We Roll a Truck
Real questions from real Central Texas customers, answered the same way we answer them on the phone: straight.
How do I know if I have a carbon monoxide problem right now?
If an alarm is sounding or anyone has symptoms, headache, dizziness, nausea, confusion, get everyone out first and call 911 from outside, the testing conversation happens after safety, always. Short of emergency: the whisper patterns deserve instruments, recurring headaches or fatigue at home that clear away from it, symptoms tracking the heating season, soot marks or persistent pilot troubles on fuel appliances, and the answer is a scheduled test rather than worry, ambient levels and every combustion source read in one visit. The gas gives no sensory warning at any concentration, which is exactly why the meter, and never the nose, is the arbiter.
My CO alarm went off once then stopped. Was it real?
Treat it as real until instruments say otherwise: alarms trip on concentration-over-time math, and a brief event, a drafting hiccup, a garage door moment, a generator gust, can trip and clear while the source remains, ready for the night the conditions stack worse. The post-alarm protocol is the full source hunt, every combustion appliance analyzed, venting verified under the draft conditions that trip intermittently, weather and exhaust-fan interactions considered, and the alarm itself assessed for age and health, since expiring sensors do false-alarm, a possibility confirmed only by ruling the house clean first. One unexplained alarm is the cheapest warning you will ever get; the test converts it into either a fixed cause or verified peace.
Do gas appliances always make some carbon monoxide?
Combustion chemistry’s honest answer: clean, complete burning produces minimal CO, and well-tuned appliances venting properly deliver effectively none to the living space, which is the tested standard your equipment should meet, while incomplete combustion, rich mixtures, dirty burners, disrupted airflow, produces CO in earnest, and venting failures deliver even clean exhaust indoors. The practical upshot is the two-layer check the visit runs: the burn analyzed at the flue, proving the chemistry, and the draft verified, proving the path, with annual combustion service keeping both layers true. Fuel appliances are safe equipment maintained honestly; the meter is how honesty gets verified.
Where should CO alarms actually go in my house?
Sleeping areas rule the placement math: an alarm outside each sleeping zone, close enough to wake people through doors, plus units on every level including basements, near but not inside attached garages, and supplementing, never replacing, the combustion-equipment room coverage, with mounting height flexible since CO mixes with air rather than layering like smoke. The assessment reads your actual floor plan against that coverage, flags the expiration dates on existing devices, the routinely-shocking find, and names the gaps plainly. Listed-quality units, interconnected where wiring allows, and a replacement calendar close the layer; the equipment testing ahead of it remains the real protection.
Is CO testing included in regular maintenance?
In ours, structurally: every fuel-burning appliance we service gets combustion analysis as checklist standard, the analyzer reading the burn at each heating visit, draft verification riding along, which keeps the source layer continuously tested for maintenance customers without a separate appointment. The standalone testing visit serves everyone else and the specific moments, purchases, post-alarm hunts, symptom questions, remodel-adjacent verification, plus the whole-house ambient and alarm-layer assessment beyond any single appliance’s service. Either path ends in the same place: numbers on paper, the only acceptable ambient reading rounding to zero, and a house whose combustion story is measured rather than assumed.
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Measured, Because You Cannot Smell It
Every burn analyzed, every path verified, alarms read honestly, numbers on paper. Prefer to write it out? Send the form and we call you back.
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