4 Benefits of Air Duct Cleaning in Columbus, Ohio

Dust in houses is a mixture of dead skin cells, hair (especially if you have pets), clothing fibers, bacteria, dust mites, bits of dead bugs, soil particles, pollen, and microscopic specks of plastic.

It’s more than just a fine layer covering household objects. And it’s more than the stuff in the air you see when sunshine is streaming through windows. Care to guess how much your home accumulates every year?

The average home collects 40 pounds of dust every year.

You can try to get rid of it by vacuuming, washing clothes and bedsheets, and dusting with the right implement. Your furnace filter will also help - as long as you change it regularly.

But that dust has to settle somewhere, and too often it’s in your ducts. Over the years, ducts are going to accumulate dust, mold, and debris, especially in older houses. When homes get remodeled, drywall is being torn out and woodwork moved while your HVAC is still running.

You’d be surprised how many pieces of drywall, insulation, or even some wood pieces we have removed during our duct cleaning.

Getting rid of it is a complicated process. What’s paramount is that it needs to go. It interferes with your breathing, can cause allergic reactions, and damages your HVAC.

Read more: Air Duct Cleaning Process in Columbus, Ohio, from Start to Finish

This article will examine the benefits of having clean ducts. It turns out that your ductwork affects your entire HVAC system, your home, and even your health.

1)  Air Duct Cleaning Benefits Your Health

When you have ductwork that’s going into crawl spaces or underneath the house, a lot of it is not sealed, especially in older houses. And if you have the ductwork going through damp, dark areas, you might have mold building up there. As it’s building up, and your system is not sealed, all of that is going to be pulled into the furnace and sent back through the air. And as it’s reproducing, you’re breathing more and more contaminated air in.

Every time your furnace’s (or air handler’s) blower kicks on, it’s stirring up that stuff. It’s circulating constantly.

People with allergies or breathing problems often don’t realize that part of their problem is the dirty air coming from their ductwork.

In addition to normal accumulations of dust and dirt found in all homes with air ducts, there are several other factors that can increase the need for regular HVAC system cleaning:

• pets
• occupants with allergies or asthma
• cigarette smoke
• home renovation or remodeling projects

Some occupants are more sensitive to these contaminants than others. Allergy and asthma sufferers, as well as young children and the elderly, tend to be more susceptible to the types of poor indoor air quality that air duct cleaning can help address.

Other health effects may show up either years after exposure has occurred, or only after long or repeated periods of exposure. These include some respiratory diseases, heart disease, and cancer. It is prudent to try to improve the indoor air quality in your home even if symptoms are not noticeable.

The industry standard is to clean any material that has not adhered to the ducts. But you’ll have growths and other things in the ductwork that won’t come out with ordinary tools. At that point, the ducts can be treated with chemicals that will kill mold and bacteria that are growing inside.

Chemical and botanical-based disinfectants can be effective at neutralizing odors and killing any mold growth inside your ducts.

2)  Air Duct Cleaning Benefits Your HVAC System

Dust is also going to affect your HVAC systems. When you turn on the furnace after several months of non-use, you’re probably going to smell some stuff burning. That smell is heat burning a layer of dust. There’s a lot of material that’s in there that’s going to be affected by the heat.

How much dust is getting into that blower wheel? How much is getting into the heat exchanger? Or if it’s an air handler, how much is getting onto the heat strips?

Clean systems are more efficient than dirty ones. Every contaminate in your furnace degrades its performance. Motors have to work harder. Fans are weighed down. A dirty condenser coil forces the unit to work harder, which leads to more wear and tear on the system.

Your once-efficient system is working harder with poorer results. That can result in more service calls from HVAC contractors. Ultimately, it might mean that a system designed to run for 20 years might break down five years or so earlier than that.

If you’ve got debris sitting on your blower wheel, it can be an obstruction to airflow. By cleaning that part of the furnace, we’re making sure that you’re getting the most efficient airflow it can offer you. That will equate to shorter run times. Shorter run times mean a smaller energy bill.

It also gives your home the conditioned air it’s calling for. If you have hot and cold spots, unobstructed airflow can help.

It may not be huge, but it adds up. If you have certain areas in your home where you’re not feeling a lot of airflow, it could very well be that your blower wheel is not clean enough for it to properly disperse that airflow.

The benefit of having a clean furnace is, first and foremost, having the peace of mind that there’s nothing sitting in there that can affect your breathing. You won’t be breathing anything harmful that’s blowing around into your home.

3)  Air Duct Cleaning Benefits Your Ductwork

You also may notice that a bathroom, bedroom, or other room in your home doesn’t receive the same amount of airflow as other rooms. This can create hot and cold spots, comfortable rooms, and uncomfortable ones. If the airflow is uneven, it could be the result of a dirty evaporator coil and blower wheel. They can become so dirty that air isn’t able to flow freely and efficiently through your home’s HVAC system. This creates an excess of static pressure.

When this happens, both your furnace and air conditioner are forced to work harder to maintain a comfortable temperature. This added energy expenditure means higher utility bills.

If you’re unfortunate enough to have holes in your ductwork, you might have rodents in there as well, which will be more than happy to build their nests in a place where they won’t be disturbed.

If rodents are in your ductwork, they will leave some telltale signs. Not only will you see droppings, but you may also find chewed-up materials or unpleasant smells, all of which indicate an infestation.

(Keep in mind that a rodent infestation might require more than air duct cleaning. You should have a serious talk with your HVAC expert about sealing or repairing your ducts. If you ignore the issue, it could lead to serious structural damage, not to mention an HVAC system that doesn’t work efficiently.)

4)  Air Duct Cleaning Benefits Your Home

Your HVAC company should be talking to you about more than equipment. To do a complete job, their primary focus should be comfort.

Are you happy with the humidity inside of your home in the summer? Do you have a room or two that’s always too cold or too warm? Are you happy with your gas or electric bill?

Are you comfortable? Is your indoor air clean?

Cleaning ductwork sounds routine, but a good contractor is going to be very attentive to detail. They should make sure your ducts are in much better condition than when they first got there.

Then they should point out problems they discovered. Are the ducts sealed? If not, the duct and debris will return much quicker than if there were no hole.

Is there a troublesome growth of mold? A chemical spray can help treat that. But what’s causing the moisture? That should be addressed, as well.

Air Duct Cleaning in Columbus, Ohio

According to the EPA, the levels of indoor air pollutants are often 2 to 5 times higher than outdoor levels, and in some cases, these levels can exceed 100 times that of outdoor levels of the same pollutants. In other words, sometimes the air inside can be more harmful than the air outside.

A house is going to naturally collect dust, and it’s going to wind up in the system.

Duct cleaning is something you’re going to want to do every 3-5 years, depending on the age of the house, renovation projects, and a host of other factors. For homes with pets or smokers, you should consider duct cleaning every 1-3 years.

From a health standpoint, and to keep your HVAC system performing at its full potential, the benefits of clean ducts are immense. Those of us in the business refer to your furnace or air conditioner as the heart of your system, but they can’t do their job without the arteries and veins - the ductwork. And if your ducts are dirty, so is the indoor air.

If you’re interested in having your ducts cleaned, and you live in Columbus or Central Ohio, visit our duct cleaning page on our website to schedule yours today.