When Should I Have My Ducts Cleaned?

2 Comment(s) Posted April 24, 2012 at 8:16am

It’s pretty easy to tell when you need air conditioner repair, or when you need to replace your heat pump. Unfortunately, it’s not always as easy to figure out when you need air duct cleaning. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there – duct cleaning will give you perfect indoor air quality, duct cleaning WON’T affect your air quality, but will improve your HVAC efficiency – and increasing reports of air duct cleaning scams make people even more wary. At Magnolia Heating & Air Conditioning, we don’t want anyone to go without duct cleaning if they really need it. So how do you tell when you need duct cleaning?

How do your ducts get dirty?

If your air ducts are properly sealed and your filters are in place, you shouldn’t get too much dust in your ducts. Which means if you DO have dirty ducts, there’s something else going on! One common reason ducts get dusty is the return ducts are on the floor. This is a great way to keep your floors clean – the return vents will vacuum up the dirt on the floor around them. Unfortunately, this is also the way dust and dirt get into the ducts! If you have your ducts on the floor, add a filter in the grille to prevent contaminants from the floor from getting into your ducts – just remember to change the filters frequently!

Another common reason for dirty ducts is duct leakage, particularly the return side of the duct system. The return ducts are under negative pressure, meaning any leaks in the system will suck dirty air back into the ducts. This is especially bad in dirty crawl spaces or attics, as the negative pressure will pull much of the dirt and dust into the system.

So do you need duct cleaning?

Once a duct analysis has been performed to figure out the source of your dirty duct problem, it helps to have them cleaned before the problem is fixed. Duct cleaning, followed by duct repair, will let you breathe much easier and will help your HVAC systems run more smoothly. If you need duct cleaning or repair, give Magnolia Heating & Air Conditioning a call today!