Air Duct & HVAC
Most Houses Do Not Need This. Here Is When Yours Does.
Duct cleaning is the most oversold service in this trade. We do it after a fire, a mold problem, or water in the system, for cause, with a written scope. If you do not have a cause, we will tell you to keep your money.
Free inspection on restoration work · Licensed C-10 & General B · Answered 24/7
About that flyer on your door.
The advertised price is a door opener. The job it describes, every vent in the house cleaned for less than the cost of a tank of gas, cannot be performed for that money by anybody, which means the number is there to get a technician into the building. What happens next is the actual business model, and it usually involves a camera, a photograph of something furry, and a number several hundred times the advertised one.
The EPA has looked at routine duct cleaning and does not find that it prevents health problems or measurably improves efficiency in an ordinary home. We are not going to argue with that in order to sell you something.
What we will do is clean a system that has a reason to be cleaned, on a written scope agreed before anybody arrives, at a price that does not move once the van is in your driveway.
Get these four things in writing first
- Number of supply and return openings included
- Whether the coil, blower, and plenum are in scope
- What equipment is used, and that containment is negative pressure
- The total, and what would ever change it
Six reasons that are actually reasons.
All of these are causes. Time since the last cleaning is not one, and neither is a technician’s photograph of somebody else’s ductwork.
The system ran during a fire
Smoke pulled into the returns coats the inside of the ductwork and the coil, and it keeps re-releasing odor into clean rooms long after every surface in the house has been washed.
Mold growth in the system
Visible growth on the coil, in the plenum, or inside flex duct. Common where a condensate drain has backed up or where ducts run through a damp crawl space.
Water got into the ducts
Ducts under a slab or in a crawl space fill from below during a loss, and the fiberglass in flex duct holds it. This is a replacement scope more often than a cleaning one.
Sewage event in the building
A Category 3 loss with the system running distributes contaminated aerosol through the whole property. The ductwork is part of the affected area, not a separate question.
Rodents or birds in the system
Droppings and nesting material in ductwork are a contamination problem, and the entry point has to be closed or the cleaning is temporary.
Construction dust in open returns
A remodel with unsealed returns loads the system with fine debris. Worth cleaning once at the end, and worth sealing the returns during the work so it never happens.
What a real one involves.
If a quote is missing steps three and four, it is a vent vacuuming rather than a system cleaning, and it will not solve an odor or a contamination problem.
- 01
Contain and go negative
The system is shut down and the ductwork put under negative pressure with HEPA filtration, so debris is pulled into containment instead of pushed into the rooms.
- 02
Agitate and extract
Brushes and compressed air whips work the interior surfaces while the vacuum holds the negative side. Supply and return runs are done individually, not by pulling on one central point and hoping.
- 03
Coil, blower, and plenum
The parts that hold the most and get skipped the most. A cleaned duct feeding a fouled coil accomplishes nothing, which is why a scope that excludes the air handler is not a cleaning.
- 04
Replace what cannot be cleaned
Wet or contaminated flex duct and any porous insulation comes out and gets replaced. We would rather quote a replacement than sell you a cleaning of something that cannot be verified.
- 05
Close the source
The rodent entry, the failed condensate drain, the crawl space moisture. Otherwise you are on a cleaning subscription.
Duct cleaning questions
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A price that changes once the van is in your driveway was never the price.
Licensed C-10 & General B · CSLB #1158693 · Bonded & Insured
