Duct Cleaning in Tuckahoe, VA
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Step 1 of 3: Equipment
Seven months of heat pushes a lot of air through those ducts
Your furnace runs October through April here, seven months of the year. On nights that average 30°F through December through February, it cycles on and off for hours at a stretch, and every cycle pushes air, and whatever is riding in it, through the same ductwork.
Henrico County has seen 17 winter storms and 91 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and storms like that knock out power. When the power drops and comes back, the furnace restarts and pulls in whatever settled in the ducts while it sat idle. Over years of that, it builds up enough to change what comes out of your vents.
- 7 months
- October through April, your furnace pushes air through your ducts
- 5 months
- May through September, your air conditioner does the same
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NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
- How often should air ducts be cleaned?
- There's no fixed schedule that fits every house. If anyone in the house has allergies, or you have pets shedding into the return vents, or you just finished a renovation that filled the house with drywall dust, it's worth having the ducts looked at sooner rather than later. Homes here run the furnace October through April, so whatever is sitting in the ducts gets pushed through the house for seven months straight. A contractor can look at what's actually built up in your vents and tell you whether it's time.
- Is air duct cleaning worth it?
- It depends on what's actually in your ducts. If you can see dust kicking out of the vents when the furnace or AC turns on, or you're changing filters more often than you used to, cleaning them will help the air moving through your house. If the ducts are new or already clean, there's less to gain. It won't fix a duct that's leaking air into the attic or crawlspace, that's a separate repair.
- What does air duct cleaning involve?
- A contractor connects a vacuum system to the ductwork and uses brushes or air tools to loosen dust and debris built up on the inside walls of the ducts, then pulls it out through the vacuum before it can resettle. This covers the supply and return ducts, the grilles and registers, and often the coil and blower compartment where dust collects near the furnace or air handler. The whole system gets checked room by room so nothing gets missed.