Duct Cleaning in Council Bluffs, IA
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Eight months of heat pushes a lot of air through your ducts
Your furnace runs October through May here, close to eight months a year. Every one of those months it is pulling household air through the ducts and pushing it back out through the vents, and whatever is riding in that air, dust, pet hair, the fine grit that works in around windows and doors, settles out along the way.
Council Bluffs has had 16 winter storms and 56 damaging wind events over the past ten years. Wind that strong drives dust and debris into a house through every gap it can find, and a lot of it ends up pulled into the return and settled in the ductwork rather than staying in the room where a broom or a filter would catch it.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace pushes air through your ducts
- 4 months
- June through September, your air conditioner does the same
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
- How often should air ducts be cleaned?
- There is no fixed schedule that fits every home. Look inside a vent cover. If you see dust or hair building up on the inside, that is your sign, not the calendar. Homes here run the furnace October through May, eight months a year, so dust moves through the system more than in a place with a shorter heating season. A contractor can check the ducts and tell you where things stand.
- Is air duct cleaning worth it?
- It depends on what is going on in your ducts right now. If you can see dust kicking out of the vents, if a room never seems to get as warm or cool as the rest of the house, or if someone in the home has allergy symptoms that ease up when they leave, cleaning the ducts is worth doing. If none of that is happening, a cleaning is not likely to change your energy bills or air quality in a way you would notice. A contractor can look at your specific ducts and tell you whether they actually need it.
- What does air duct cleaning involve?
- A technician connects a vacuum system to the ductwork and uses brushes or air tools to loosen dust and debris from the inside of the duct walls, then pulls it out through the vacuum. The supply and return vents get cleaned too, along with the coil and blower housing, since those collect the same debris. A full job covers every duct run in the house, not just the ones you can reach from a vent cover. The furnace filter still needs regular changing afterward, since the filter is what keeps new dust out of the system going forward.