Understanding Home Duct Cleaning

As a homeowner and parent, you want your home to be a safe place for your kids to grow up. You achieve this by child-proofing electrical sockets, hiding dangerous chemicals, and putting gates on the stairs. But as your children get older, there's another way you can protect them in your home. The air your family breathes in your home is likely more polluted than the air found outside! The quality of air you breathe affects health and can cause or prevent allergies. You can greatly improve the quality of air in your home by scheduling regular duct cleaning with your HVAC contractor. 

How Duct Cleaning Works

Before you decide to get duct cleaning in your HVAC system, you might wonder exactly how it works. After all, the ducts in your home are a complicated, hard-to-reach system. How could a contractor possibly clean all the ducts effectively? Technicians first seal all the ducts in a home to avoid spreading dust throughout the home. Then they use a large hose connected to a Sani-Vac truck to the furnace. Once the vacuum is turned on, the hose uses high-powered suction to suck out all the dust, debris, allergens and possible mold spores trapped in ducts. 

Once the debris is removed, the technician flushes the ducts with compressed air to achieve a better clean. The technician then removes all the vent covers and equipment. 

Benefits and Setbacks of Duct Cleaning

You might wonder if duct cleaning is worth your time, energy, and money. While it's definitely not something that is required to live happily in your home, it does have some unique benefits that can't be achieved any other way. For example, people who suffer from allergies, asthma or unexplained sickness might find their quality of life improved after duct cleaning. Especially if you own pets, air ducts can trap pet dander and hair and swirl it around indefinitely, lowering your air quality. Duct cleaning removes all of the pollutants affecting your air.

One downside to this cleaning service is that it can be quite pricey. For 3 or so hours of work, it can cost upwards of $400 dollars for an average-sized home. If you have a large two-story home, expect to be paying closer to $1,000. Additionally, you have to keep an eye on how often your ducts are cleaned. They only need to be cleaned once every 3-5 years, but that's so far away that you might forget in the meantime! 

Use the information above to decide if air duct cleaning is for you. Then call an HVAC contractor that specializes in air ducts for a professional clean through a company like McFoy Refrigeration, Inc.