Duct Cleaning in Traverse City, MI
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Nine months of heating pushes a lot of air through your ducts
Your furnace runs September through May here. Every one of those months, your ducts are moving air through the house, and whatever is in that air settles out along the way. Dust, pet hair, and the fine debris that collects in a basement or crawlspace ride the airflow, and some of it stays behind in the duct runs.
Winter nights average 16°F from December through February, so the furnace is cycling on and off often to keep up. Each time it starts, air moves fast through the ducts and stirs up what has settled. Grand Traverse County has seen 27 winter storms and 34 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and outages that cut power and bring a furnace back on do the same thing. Over nine months of that, the buildup narrows the path air travels and makes your furnace push harder to heat the house.
- 9 months
- September through May, your furnace pushes air through your ducts
- 2 months
- July through August, your air conditioner does the same
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
- How often should air ducts be cleaned?
- Most homes do fine having their ducts cleaned every few years, not every year. If someone in the house has allergies, there's been a pet in the home for a while, or you just finished a renovation, cleaning sooner makes sense because dust and debris build up faster. Homes here run the furnace from September through May, so the ducts are moving air most of the year and collecting more over that stretch than they would somewhere with a shorter heating season.
- Is air duct cleaning worth it?
- It depends on what's actually going on in the ducts. If you see dust kicking out of the vents, notice a musty smell when the furnace kicks on, or know there's debris in there from rodents or construction work, cleaning is worth doing. If the ducts are just moving air quietly and nobody in the house has breathing trouble, it may not need attention that often. A contractor can look at the ductwork itself and tell you what's actually in there before you spend money on it.
- What does air duct cleaning involve?
- A contractor uses brushes and a high-powered vacuum to loosen dust and debris from inside the ductwork, then pulls it out through access points cut into the ducts. Both the supply and return runs get cleaned, along with the grilles and registers on the walls or ceiling. Some contractors also clean the blower and coil inside the furnace, since those collect dust too. Once the cleaning is done, the access points get sealed back up so the system runs the way it did before.