With summer behind us, it’s not a bad time to consider having professional HVAC technicians clean the air ducts in your home’s central, forced-air cooling and heating system. After several months of nearly consecutive heating and then cooling, your home’s ductwork may have accumulated a variety of contaminants, left behind as conditioned and spent air moves through your home’s supply and return ducts, respectively.
Air Quality
The unwanted materials collecting in your air ducts can include various allergens, mold spores, pet and human hair and dander, insect parts, dust mites, chemical residue, carpet fibers, vermin scat, bacteria, and more. This can threaten the health of vulnerable home occupants, including those suffering from allergies and other respiratory ailments. Plus just the idea of breathing this stuff is gross.
Efficiency
Dirty ductwork also may impede airflow in your forced-air HVAC system. The equipment must work harder to deliver conditioned air into the rooms in your home. That wastes energy, stresses parts, and leads to uneven cooling or heating.
Scheduling a Duct Cleaning
Yet, if your home has an effective air filtration system, it probably only requires duct cleaning every several years. Except in exceptional circumstances (e.g., living on a dusty road), most households don’t require duct cleaning every year. Following are three proven ways to tell whether you should schedule duct cleaning for your home:
- Dust or dust bunnies collecting near supply registers. Shine a flashlight into the ductwork to see if dust is accumulating in the duct.
- Visible mold growing on or near ductwork.
- Evidence of rodent or insect infestation in ducts.
If you notice any of these issues, or if your home hasn’t had a duct cleaning in several years, call your trusted HVAC contractor and schedule a duct inspection. Technicians will use sophisticated diagnostic equipment to determine whether the ducts need to be cleaned or repaired, and then offer to do the work. They also should plan to clean connected equipment, since it likely will be dirty, too.
To discuss a duct cleaning in your Calgary area home, please contact us at Arpi Industries.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Calgary, Alberta about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about ductwork and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide.
