Cleaning the air ducts in your Modesto, CA home is an important part of your ongoing HVAC maintenance. Heavy buildups of lint-like debris can impede airflow, diminish HVAC efficiency, and lower your indoor air quality (IAQ). But recommendations for air duct cleaning vary. The National Air Duct Cleaners Association (NADCA) suggests scheduling these services every three to five years. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends duct cleaning on an as-needed basis only. Read on to learn the best duct-cleaning schedule for your household.
What Is Duct Cleaning?
Your HVAC ducting is a complex network of conduits that travels throughout your home. Although most of your air ducts are located behind drywall and other building elements, you are likely to have visible ducting in your garage, crawl space, basement, or attic. While your HVAC air filter traps dust, dirt, and other particulates, many micro-fine allergens and contaminants pass through the filter mesh. Over time, these particulates accumulate in ducting to create the same, lint-like buildups that form on air filters.
If you haven’t scheduled air duct cleaning in quite a while, you might have visible clumps of this debris on your air registers or air vents or just behind your air vent covers. By hindering airflow, trapped debris forces furnaces, heat pumps, and air conditioners to work harder. HVAC systems with dirty ducting use more energy to move air. They also have a harder time extracting humidity.
Air duct cleaning uses mechanical agitation, negative air pressure, and vacuum suction to extract trapped materials. HVAC companies use brushes, rotating tools, and other equipment to slough off trapped waste and suction it out.
What Does Duct Cleaning Entail?
Air duct cleaning extracts trapped particulate matter from all air distribution channels. In addition to air ducts, technicians also clean:
- Air handlers
- Blower motors and blower fans
- AC condensate lines
- Vents and vent covers
- Evaporator and condenser coils
Duct Cleaning for Preventative Maintenance
For general maintenance, NADCA’s recommendation to clean ducting every three to five years works best. This duct cleaning schedule will limit operational costs by ensuring consistently optimal airflow. In so doing, it will reduce cumulative wear, lower your home energy bills, and extend the lifespan of your heating and cooling equipment.
Environmental Factors
Modesto has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Situated in the Central Valley, it’s too far from the Pacific Ocean to experience the sea-breeze moisture that settles in coastal areas. Lacking sufficient humidity, airborne dust, dander, pollen, and other particulate matter circulate for longer. They also find their way into homes and air ducts.
In arid areas, cleaning air ducts every three years rather than every five is generally the best choice. With fewer trapped particulates in your ducting, you’ll have fewer allergens and contaminants released during heating and cooling cycles, thereby reducing their reentry into your indoor air.
There are several factors specific to your immediate environment that can also make more frequent duct cleaning necessary:
- Active construction
- Nearby freeways
- Dusty terrain
- Local airports
All of these factors contribute to increased particulate matter and create conditions that lead to dirty ducts.
Household-Specific Factors
You might want to clean your air ducts more often if anyone in your household has a serious respiratory condition, such as:
- Asthma
- Chronic allergies
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- Sarcoidosis
Frequent duct cleaning is also best for households with aging adults, newborn infants, and people with compromised immunity or terminal illnesses.
Duct Cleaning as a Corrective Measure
Duct cleaning is sometimes necessary to resolve functional HVAC issues or improve living conditions. If you opt to follow the EPA’s recommendation to schedule duct-cleaning on an as-needed basis, the following are several signs that it’s time for this service.
Following a Noticeable Decline in IAQ
These are several common signs of poor IAQ:
- Sniffling and sneezing
- Coughing
- Itchy, watery, and irritated eyes
- Mild skin irritation
- Recurring headaches
If you have a low IAQ, HVAC companies can help you find and resolve the underlying cause. Even if dirty or leaky ductwork doesn’t lie at the heart of your IAQ problems, cleaning your air ducts is an integral part of IAQ remediation.
Excessively Dusty Conditions
During heating and cooling cycles, blower fans can dislodge trapped dirt, dander, and pollen, circulating these particles throughout your home. If you’re constantly sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming with less-than-stellar results, cleaning your air ducts could help.
Short Filter Lifespans
Standard air filters should last one to three months. If your air vents or air registers have visible buildups of debris and your air filters last three weeks or less, it’s time to have your ductwork cleaned.
Recurring HVAC problems
By compromising airflow, dirty ducts can cause several functional heating and cooling system problems:
- Short cycling
- Overheating
- Icing
- Frequent circuit breaker trips
- Pooling water near air handlers
Cleaning your air ducts improves airflow, reduces your HVAC system’s workload, and enables efficient and reliable climate control.
After Pest Infestation
Air ducts are a popular hiding spot for many pests. If you recently treated a pest infestation in your home, your air ducts could be riddled with pathogenic detritus, including:
- Fur
- Wings
- Shed exoskeletons
- Food
- Feces
Duct cleaning will extract this debris to improve your IAQ. It can also prevent airflow-related problems with indoor humidity and mold.
Another essential time to schedule duct cleaning is following carcass removal. Small animals such as mice and rats can wander into ducting, and they don’t always find their way back out. If you recently removed a decaying animal from your air ducts, schedule duct cleaning right away. In addition to mechanical agitation and vacuum suction, we can apply deodorizing and sanitizing solutions.
During Mold Mitigation
You should definitely schedule air duct cleaning if your air vents, air registers, or air filters have colorful patches of mold. However, even without visible mold on these components, air duct cleaning could still be a critical part of mold mitigation. When homes have widespread mold issues, spores can make their way into HVAC systems. Lacking professional duct cleaning, systems can circulate mold spores indefinitely.
Following Smoke Exposure
Whether you’ve had a recent indoor fire or have run your HVAC during times of heavy wildfire smoke, you need duct cleaning. Scheduling duct cleaning is the best way to eliminate tacky smoke residues and protect your indoor air quality.
After Finding and Fixing Duct Leaks
Leaky air ducts release conditioned air in remote building areas. For instance, if you have a duct leak, your system could deposit cooled or heated air in your attic, basement, or crawl space. However, leaky air ducts also take in unfiltered air. Worse still, they usually take this air in from dusty, low-lying spaces rife with allergens and contaminants. After finding and fixing duct leaks, companies often recommend duct cleaning service.
As a full-service air conditioning and heating company, Loves Air has proudly served Modesto and the surrounding cities since 2009. We offer expert duct cleaning and duct sealing services and advanced IAQ solutions. As a Better Business Bureau (BBB)-accredited company with an A+ BBB rating, we offer upfront pricing and solid satisfaction guarantees. If you have dirty ducts in Modesto, contact Loves Air today!
