Buying a house around the Highland Lakes comes with a thick stack of paperwork, and somewhere in the middle sit a few pages about heating and air conditioning. Texas inspectors fill those pages out on a standard state form, so every report follows the same order no matter who writes it. Buyers who learn to read that section, and to notice what it deliberately leaves out, walk into negotiations with far better information than the summary page alone gives them.
When a report flags the air conditioner, the usual next step is a closer look from a heating and cooling technician. Around Marble Falls, Kingsland and Horseshoe Bay, buyers often turn to Clendennen Services for that follow-up, since the Carrier dealer handles ductwork and real estate inspections in addition to its repair and installation work and offers free second opinions on quotes someone else has written.
Four Boxes That Appear on Every Texas Report
Licensed inspectors in Texas use the Property Inspection Report Form known as REI 7-6, and its third section covers heating, ventilation and air conditioning. The Texas Real Estate Commission explains what consumers should know about property inspections, including why every licensed inspector must hand over this form first. The HVAC portion is split into heating equipment, cooling equipment, duct systems with chases and vents, and a catchall “other” line.
Each of those items gets one of four marks. It was inspected, not inspected, not present, or deficient. The form itself spells out two things buyers tend to miss. A deficient mark does not obligate the seller to fix anything, and any further evaluation or cost estimate is the buyer’s job, ideally finished before the option period runs out. In other words, the report starts the conversation. It rarely finishes it.
Heating Equipment Reveals What Fuel the House Depends On
The heating box lists the type of system and its energy source, and that single line can shape years of ownership. Inside town limits, natural gas may be available. Out toward Spicewood, Tow or the far side of Lake LBJ, many homes run on propane, while others rely on heat pumps with electric strip heat as backup.
Propane furnaces raise a practical problem during a sale. Texas inspectors are not required to light a pilot or switch on decommissioned equipment. A weekend lake house that has been sitting empty with the gas shut off can come back marked “not inspected,” and that is not the same as passing. If the furnace matters to you, ask the seller to have every utility on before inspection day.
Heat pumps carry their own blind spot. A summer inspection usually focuses on cooling mode, and testing heat mode fully during a 100 degree afternoon is difficult. The reverse happens in January, when a cold morning can keep an inspector from running the air conditioner at all. Either way, half of a heat pump’s job may go unverified.
Cooling Equipment Can Hide an Age Problem
Inspectors typically measure the temperature drop between return air and supply air. A difference somewhere around 15 to 20 degrees is generally treated as normal, and a narrower gap hints at low refrigerant, a dirty coil or an undersized system. Yet a unit that cools nicely on an October afternoon may struggle through a long August stretch when attic temperatures soar.
Age is the bigger question. The data plate on the outdoor condenser carries a serial number that usually encodes the manufacture year. Refrigerant type matters just as much. Equipment built around R-22 relies on a refrigerant that stopped being produced in the United States in 2020, so any recharge is expensive and repairs often turn into replacements. Systems running R-410A are now giving way to newer refrigerants as well, which means a future repair on an older unit may involve harder to source parts.
Look closely at the outdoor unit too. Sprinkler overspray, lakeside humidity, cedar debris and fallen leaves all corrode fins and choke airflow over time. A condenser and indoor coil from different eras or brands, a common result of piecemeal repairs, deserves a question even when the system seems to run fine.
The Attic Holds Most of the Trouble
Many Hill Country homes route their ductwork through attics that bake well past 130 degrees in July. Flexible duct sags, gets crushed by storage, or slips loose at the boots where it meets ceiling registers. Older lake cabins built on piers sometimes run ducts through open crawl spaces, where rodents and moisture do their own damage.
Condensate handling is where water stains begin. Most attic air handlers sit above a secondary drain pan, ideally with a float switch that shuts the system down when the pan fills. Rust or mineral lines inside that pan point to past overflows, and a brown ring on the ceiling below tells the same story from the other side. Keep in mind that inspectors only judge what is visible and accessible, and they will not shift stored boxes to reach a hidden section of duct.
Questions the Report Will Never Ask for You
An inspection captures one day. The seller’s history fills in the rest, and a few requests during the option period can reveal what no thermometer will.
- Ask for maintenance receipts, including the date of the last coil cleaning, since a dirty coil can freeze a system on the hottest weekend of the year.
- Request the installation date and any warranty paperwork, and confirm whether the warranty was registered and can transfer to a new owner.
- Find out whether refrigerant has been added in recent years, because repeated top offs usually mean a leak that nobody has located.
- Ask which rooms run warm or cold, especially upstairs bedrooms, bonus rooms and detached casitas.
- See a summer electric bill, which gives you a rough baseline for how hard the equipment works.
Turning a Deficient Mark Into Real Numbers
A note reading “recommend evaluation by a qualified technician” gives you very little to negotiate with. A dedicated HVAC visit changes that. A technician can measure static pressure to see whether the ducts are strangling airflow, check the refrigerant charge, look at the coil itself, test a propane furnace’s heat exchanger and flue for carbon monoxide risk, and check for leaky duct connections.
With a written estimate in hand, your choices become clearer. You can ask for a repair credit at closing, a lower price, repairs completed by the seller before closing, or you can walk away while the option period still protects you. If the seller hands over a quote from their own contractor, a second opinion costs little and occasionally saves thousands.
Life After the Keys Change Hands
Your first full summer in the house is when any weakness tends to surface, usually on a holiday weekend when every service company is booked solid. Buyers who start with a clear picture of the system’s age, refrigerant and duct condition can plan a replacement budget instead of being surprised by one. A fresh filter, a baseline tune up and a quick walk through the attic before the heat arrives turn an unknown system into one you actually understand, and that understanding is worth having long before the thermostat gets its first real workout of the year.
