AC Air Duct Cleaning Service

Air Duct Cleaning (aka Air Vent Cleaning or AC Duct Cleaning) entails the removal of dust, debris and allergens, such as mold and mildew, from the ducts of your air conditioning and heating system.  Air Duct Cleaning is some ways is a misnomer because your heating and cooling coils, fans and filters should also be cleaned at the same time your ducts are cleaned - it's all one HVAC system.  Airborne dust particles settle into your home’s air ducts and are cycled through your HVAC system’s heating and cooling units.  Without periodic duct and coil cleaning, air ducts and vents and heating and cooling coils can become inundated with dust buildup, creating allergy and health issues for you and your family, and significantly reducing the energy efficiency and longevity of your furnace and air conditioning systems.   

The frequency at which air ducts should be cleaned is based on a range of factors and circumstances of a particular property, its HVAC system and the health needs/concerns of its occupants.  The National Air Duct Cleaners Association has made a general recommendation, based on standardized conditions, that a home should have its air ducts cleaned every three to five years.  Some of the primary factors in determining how often a home’s air ducts need cleaning are things like the region where you live (dustier, dryer environments, such as Utah, elicit different profiles of contaminant particulate than highly humid environments), as well as whether you have family members with respiratory concerns.  Most other factors that would prompt the need to get air ducts cleaned are circumstantial.  For most homeowners, it makes the most sense to monitor the conditions in their home, and order a duct cleaning service when your home starts showing signs of need.  We detail those signs in the next FAQ, below: “How to Tell If I Need My Air Ducts Cleaned?”

There are a number of tell-tale signs that a home is in need of an air duct cleaning service.  

The US EPA explicitly recommends ducts be cleaned in the following circumstances:

• Mold growth in ducts or on other components of a heating and cooling system (which can frequently be difficult to see due to challenges of access)
• Infestation of ducts by rodents, insects or other vermin
• When excessive amounts of dust or debris have clogged ducts
• When dust or debris particles is released from supply registers

Many physicians with specialties in asthma, allergies and respiratory issues also recommend air duct cleaning for households of individuals who have respiratory problems, as part of a program to reduce potential allergens from the indoor air environment.

To break this down into more practical signs that homeowners can monitor, the following are good indicators you to get your air ducts cleaned promptly:

Signs of a build-up of excessive dust or debris in your air ducts:

• If your home gets dusty quickly: If you notice everything is continually dusty in your house: dust bunnies on the floor, dust on the furniture, etc., and even after cleaning, the dust seems to magically reappear a short time later, this is a good sign your HVAC system has excessive dust accumulation
• If your ducts or vents are clogged with dust: when you look at your supply and return vents, if you see heavy dust accumulation, or if you pull out your vent covers and visually look inside and see dust/debris buildup, this indicates heavy dust build-up
• If your air filters fill with dust quickly and require frequent change:  Monitoring your air filters and the frequency at which they fill with dust is a good indicator of how much dust/debris particulate is built up in the ductwork of an HVAC system.  If you notice that you need to change your air filters at a frequency more regular than once a month, you should consider having your air ducts cleaned.  
• If you recently renovated your home: If you recently renovated, there’s a good chance you need your ductwork cleaned.  Renovations generate an excess of dust, and frequently overwhelm a HVAC system.  Renovation dust can be a shock to your HVAC system and has in many instances led to HVAC system failure due to dust buildup.   
• If you have poor or unstable airflow:  Poor or unstable airflow is a sign your HVAC system is struggling to push air through your ducts to its intended destination, and the blockage is frequently the result of dust/debris or some other buildup in your ductwork. 
• If your heating or cooling utility costs are unusually high: Granted, your heating or cooling utility bill may be high for a range of reasons, but one of them is an overtaxed HVAC system that is operating at low efficiency due to high dust/debris buildup in the system.  If you’ve ruled out other common causes of spikes in utility costs, and especially if you see other signs of dust accumulation, it makes sense to have your ductwork inspected.

We have many clients who initially considered attempting DIY Air Duct Cleaning, but had second thoughts as they got up to speed on the scope of what is required to do the job right.  Below are the primary reasons it makes sense to hire a professional air duct cleaning service:

Specialized Commercial-Grade Equipment is Required

In order to thoroughly clean an air duct system, it requires specialized, industrial-grade duct-cleaning equipment, including an extremely high-powered vacuum outfitted with filters built to contain toxic contaminants and rotary brushes that can reach 30-40 feet into your ducts.  Trying to do this DIY, without the necessary purpose-built equipment, make it impossible to even reach all of the nooks and crannies of your ductwork, not to mention thoroughly cleaning all all of the surfaces.  What happens in many DIY duct cleaning efforts is that only a portion of the air ducts and vents are cleaned, and the hard-to-reach areas are left.  Unfortunately, because your HVAC system is one continuous system, any residual dust, debris and allergens in hard-to-reah areas will just redistribute throughout your HVAC system, leaving you no better off than when you had started.  Another critical safeguard that our specialized equipment provides is to properly contain contaminants during the air duct cleaning process.  Our ability to maintain a continuous negative pressure environment throughout the duct cleaning, through the use of an industrial-grade high-powered vacuum, ensures that dirt, dust, spores and pollen that become agitated and airborne during the cleaning process are immediately sucked into our vacuum.  With DIY duct cleaning, what frequently happens is that contaminants are kicked-up during the process, which is not performed under continuous pressure, and the contaminants wind up being redistributed back into the home air.

Only Professional-Grade Cleaning Ensures Thorough, Safe Decontamination

Frequently the contaminants found in ductwork include toxic growths of mold spores, mildew, as well as other bacteria, pests and other biological contaminants that feed off the dust and debris.  In order to fully eradicate these kinds of growths, end-to-end cleaning with proper equipment capable of completely removing contaminants and proper environmentally safe cleaning solutions to disinfect the surfaces, is required.  A DIY air duct cleaning, for lack of access or reach or proper equipment, can inadvertently leave areas of contaminant growth unaddressed.  As a result, these contaminants just continue to grow and continue to impact the health of you and your family.

Professional Specialized HVAC Knowledge Ensures Comprehensive System Cleaning

Many homeowners embarking on a DIY duct cleaning exercise don’t realize that cleaning the air ducts is just part of the job: all of the airflow touchpoints of your HVAC system also need to be cleaned as part of the process.  An Air Duct Cleaning Professional will know every component that requires cleaning to ensure the whole system is fully clean when complete.  At Salt Lake City Air Duct Cleaning Service Co, our professional air duct cleaning team, in addition to cleaning your vents and ducts, will also inspect your whole HVAC system, including your fans, filters and compressors and can inform you of any components that may require additional maintenance or repair.   Having your ac ducts cleaned by a professional gives you the  benefit of a trained set of eyes focused up close on your entire HVAC system, and can help to avoid costly repairs in the future, and will ensure the highest energy efficient operation of your heating and cooling systems.

Professional Duct Cleaning Service Also offers Complementary Services

In addition to cleaning your ducts and vents, a professional duct cleaning service also offers complementary services, such as dryer vent cleaning, mold remediation, professional sanitizing and disinfection.  Many times, it’s important to address these issues at once, while all of the necessary equipment and expertise is in place.  Addressing these issues piecemeal entails extra expense.  Having these issues addressed at the same time will reduce fire hazards and allergenic triggers and ensure the wellbeing of you and your family.

The average cost of cleaning an air duct system typically ranges between $450 and $1000 per heating and cooling system according to the US EPA.  However the cost of an air duct cleaning for your home will depend on several factors, including:

• the size of the system
• system accessibility
• level of contamination
• number of crew required (given system size, level of contamination, etc.)
• type of ductwork
• other environmental factors.

We hear of a range of different unfortunate stories of companies offering a $99 air duct cleaning service, and we warn potential customers against taking the bait.  Invariably, if a service is offering duct cleaning for this price, the service is not reputable and the objective is either to upsell to a significantly higher price or otherwise pull a fast one.  The level of work necessary to properly perform a full ac duct cleaning makes it simply uneconomic for anyone to do it for this price.  Let the buyer beware.

Just like the cost to clean air ducts, how long it takes really depends on a number of factors particular to your HVAC system.  Just to put an average time range out there, if you live in a very standard sized home and everything else is fairly straight-forward, the time required to clean your air ducts is usually between 3-5 hours.  Obviously the same factors we list above related to cost impact the time required: the size of the system, how easily accessible the ductwork is, how much dust/contaminant buildup you have, etc., all have a big impact.

Here again, beware of any air duct cleaning company that offers a $99 air duct cleaning service.  The time and equipment involved just don’t make that economic for anyone for that amount and where a deal like this is offered, there is certainly a catch involved.