Beyond The Membership
Not every job fits the membership.Some are the best work we do.
High-end custom homes, new construction, and remodels across Central Texas.
How This Is Different
This is separate from membership.
The membership is for existing homes inside Leander and Cedar Park. Custom build work is a different service with its own scope, its own timeline, and its own quote, and it reaches further: we take it across Williamson and Travis Counties.
What carries over is the standard. The same person who caps his membership at 396 homes so he can do the work properly is the person designing your system.
What We Take On
Three kinds of work.
Custom homes
Full system design for one-off builds, worked out with the builder and the architect before the walls close rather than fitted around them afterward.
New construction
Ductwork, equipment, and commissioning on new builds, staged around the rest of the trades so nothing gets buried or rushed at the end.
Remodels and additions
Adding conditioned square footage changes the math on everything upstream. We resize and rebalance the system instead of asking the old one to cover more house.
Working on a commercial building?
Retail, medical and professional buildings run on year-to-year maintenance agreements rather than membership.
total duct leakage
Measured, Not Claimed
Our current build tested at two percent.
On a south Austin custom home now under construction, an independent tester measured total duct leakage at 2 percent. Lower is better, and that is a very tight system.
Leaky ductwork is the quiet reason a brand new system underperforms: conditioned air escaping into an attic before it ever reaches a room. It is invisible, it is common, and it only shows up if somebody actually tests for it.
How It Goes
From plans to a measured number.
Four stages, and you know where things stand at each one.
Walk the plans
We look at the drawings and the site together, before anything is framed. Most expensive HVAC mistakes are decided at this stage.
Design the system
Equipment sized to the actual load and duct runs laid out for the house you are really building, not a template.
Install in sequence
Rough-in coordinated with the other trades, then equipment set once the platforms and structure are ready for it.
Test and prove it
Third-party duct leakage testing at the end. You get the measured number, not an assurance that it went in fine.
Recent Work
From the job site.
Ductwork and equipment from the south Austin build.
From the Trade
What a contractor says.
I've been doing this for over 25 years, and when someone does great work, I say so. Lee Ortiz does great work.
We just wrapped a genuinely complicated HVAC upgrade and addition at my Westlake project, the kind of job that could've gone sideways in about six different ways. It didn't. Lee showed up, understood the problem, and just… solved it. No drama, no excuses, no surprise change orders three weeks in.
What I actually appreciate is that he talks to me like a peer, not like I'm a client who needs to be handled. If something's an issue, he tells me. If there's a better way to do it, he says so. We've worked together for over a decade, and that's not an accident. When someone's good, I keep them close and I stick with them.
Stacy Paulson
Stacy Paulson Design+Build, Austin, Texas
@stacypaulsondesign on Instagram (opens in a new tab)Building something?
The earlier the conversation happens, the more we can do for the house. If you are still in drawings, that is the ideal time to call.
Helpful things to send
- Plans or drawings, if you have them
- Roughly what square footage
- Where the build is
- Your timeline, and the stage you are at
None of it is required. Whatever you have is enough to start a conversation.