Does air duct cleaning actually work?

Start with what the EPA says

Because it is the thing every duct cleaning company hopes you will not look up.

The EPA's published position is that duct cleaning has never been shown to actually prevent health problems, and that particle levels in homes do not necessarily go up because of dirty ducts. They do not say it is useless. They say the health claims are not supported.

Any company telling you this will fix your family's allergies is selling you something nobody has demonstrated. We would rather tell you that up front and let you decide whether the actual benefits are worth $780.

What it genuinely does

It removes what is physically sitting inside your ductwork. That is the whole claim and it is a real one.

On a system that has never been cleaned, that can be a substantial quantity of settled dust, fibers, dander and debris, all of which is in the path of the air your system pushes into your rooms.

On a new build, it is construction material. Drywall dust, sawdust, sanding residue, insulation fiber, sometimes solid debris in a trunk line. That gets into ducts because they are installed early and sit open while the house is finished around them.

On a system with a genuine problem, rodent evidence, insect activity, a damp history, it removes the material causing it.

What it does not do

It does not fix allergies or asthma

Covered above. Not demonstrated, so we do not claim it.

If indoor air quality is the actual goal, a better filter changed on schedule does more than an annual duct cleaning, and it costs a fraction. We will tell you that even though it is an argument against our own service.

It does not meaningfully cut your power bill

You will see percentages quoted. They are invented. Severe blockage genuinely restricts airflow, but ordinary settled dust in a working system is not what is driving a Queen Creek summer bill, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

It does not substitute for changing your filter

The most important sentence on this page. Your filter is the system's actual defense. Clean the ducts and neglect the filter and you have bought perhaps a year. If your filter is gray and collapsing when we arrive, we will say so.

It does not fix an HVAC problem

If the upstairs never cools, if something smells every time the system cycles, if there is water where there should not be, those are HVAC questions. Cleaning your ducts to solve a condensate drain issue would be charging you for the wrong job.

Who should do it

• New builds and recent remodels. The clearest case there is, and in this town it covers most of the housing
• Houses over ten years old where nobody has ever done it
• Anyone moving into a place somebody else lived in
• Visible dust blowing from registers when the system starts
• A persistent smell nobody can locate
• Rodent or insect evidence in the system
• Properties with animals, or on open ground taking heavy dust

Who should not

Being equally clear about this is the point of the page.

If your house is not new, has no smell, shows no dust at the registers, has no pets, no rodent evidence, and you change a decent filter on schedule, you can probably leave it. Come back when one of those changes.

We will tell you this on the phone rather than after arriving, because a call we talk you out of costs us an hour and a job we should not have taken costs you $780.

What a $49 ad is really selling

You have seen them. Worth explaining the mechanics.

Forty-nine dollars does not cover the labor to properly clean a whole system. It does not cover the drive. So something has to give, and it is always one of two things.

Scope shrinks. What gets cleaned is the first stretch of each run, the part a vacuum reaches from the register, which is the part that was never the problem.

Or the price grows. Somebody arrives, inspects, and discovers your system needs considerably more than advertised. The real number appears once you have taken a morning off work and the registers are already off.

Our number is on this website and it is per opening, so you can calculate it yourself before you ring.

Questions