Indoor Air Quality Cost Calculator
Add up the cost of restoring indoor air after a mold, water or fire event — duct cleaning, days of HEPA air scrubbing and independent clearance testing — from the prices on your quote.
Calculator
Duct cleaning of $700.00, 3 days of air scrubbing at $100.00/day and $200.00 of clearance testing is about $1,320.00. Independent post-remediation testing verifies the air is clear. Enter your quoted prices; a planning estimate, not a bid.
After a mold, water or fire loss is cleaned up, one job remains: making sure the air itself is clear before people move back in. That final phase usually bundles three costs — cleaning the ducts so the HVAC stops re-circulating particulate, running HEPA air scrubbers for a few days to filter what is airborne, and an independent clearance test to verify the result.
This calculator adds those three lines and applies a contingency buffer, all from prices on your own quote. It is the cost companion to the air scrubber / negative-air CFM sizing helper.
Formula
The estimate is a straightforward sum with a buffer:
total = (duct_clean + scrubber_days × $/day + testing) × (1 + contingency%)
- duct_clean — the HVAC duct cleaning line (price it with the air duct cleaning cost tool).
- scrubber_days × $/day — days of HEPA air scrubbing at your daily rate.
- + testing — an independent post-remediation clearance / air test.
- × (1 + contingency%) — a 5–20% buffer for extra scrubbing days or a re-test if the first clearance fails.
Every dollar figure is a price you enter — the tool never invents one, so the estimate stays correct.
Worked example
Say the ducts cost $700 to clean, a HEPA scrubber runs for 3 days at $100/day, and clearance testing is $200, with a 10% contingency:
($700 + 3 × $100 + $200) × 1.10 = ($700 + $300 + $200) × 1.10 = $1,320
The scrubber-days line is the one that moves: a job that runs a week instead of three days nearly doubles that piece. Ask your remediator how many days of scrubbing the scope assumes.
Clearance testing and keeping IAQ in proportion
The reason to pay for an independent clearance test is the same reason you get a separate mold assessor: the company that did the removal should not be the one grading its own work. A post-remediation verification checks that surfaces are clean and that airborne particulate has returned to a normal baseline — typically compared against an outdoor control sample. If it fails, the contingency line covers another round of scrubbing and a re-test, which is far cheaper to have budgeted than to discover mid-project.
How long the scrubbers run depends on the size of the loss, how contaminated the air was, and the target air changes — size that airflow with the air scrubber / negative-air CFM tool. During active remediation the scrubbers also maintain the negative pressure that keeps the containment sealed, so the “scrubber days” here overlap with the removal phase rather than following it.
Keep this phase in proportion to the whole project. Indoor-air-quality work is the finishing line on a remediation, not a substitute for fixing the source: if there is active mold, price the removal with the mold remediation cost tool; if there was a water event, the water damage restoration and drying equipment tools. And note the scope here is post-event air cleanup — cleaning, filtering and verifying — not designing whole-house ventilation or upgrading HVAC equipment, which is a separate mechanical trade. This is a planning estimate, not a bid; confirm the scope with a licensed, insured, IICRC-certified contractor.