Been in my house for 20 years. Never got the furnace (gas/forced air) or A/C serviced and I'm still on the original setup. Contemplating getting the ducts cleaned. Not to get all covidy, but I started having some coughing/headaches/sore throat last week and wondered if I started getting the crud. Then the weekend came and I spent most of the time outside of the house and felt fine. Now I'm back in the home office and starting to feel funky again and wondering if there's something in the ductwork. I have a cleanable filter rather than the ones you replace and I keep after it pretty well.
Do it. And get your dryer vents cleaned also. That shit gets clogged up and your dryer loses efficiency.
depends on the type. Metal or flex? I tried to rationalize using a service vs just buying & installing new duct. Cost wise its the same. The duct cleaners have some different diameter brushes that are on a drain snake type of feeder. I might spend the money to see if the system is 100% sealed & leak free, especially in attics. Clean the coils for sure.
^^^ I got up on the roof of my mother in law's house to clean the chimney and decided to take a look at the dryer vent while I was up there. I have no idea how the dryer worked at all. I use dryer lint for firestarter when we go camping. Chit BURNS!
This happened to my best buds rental house in college. Shit got really squirrely really fast. Luckily fire dept. was not far away.
Don’t understand venting dryers vertical. I built a new house in 17’, and they vented mine up the roof. Made them change it, to a horizontal exit with slight downhill angle though the wall. Less piping, easier flow, easy to clean.
It wasn't that hard to clean. First thing I tried was to drop a 1" socket tied to the middle of a 50' cord. The lint was so thick that it wouldn't drop all the way down! Even bouncing it on the cord... Next trick was to run a plumbing snake down. And up. And down. And up...clearing the elbow at the bottom each time. Finally I was able to get the socket to drop through, then I tied an old wool sock to the line and used it to scrub the vent with me pulling g from the roof and the missus pulling from the laundry room. Clean as a whistle.
They make kits you can get from big-box stores that just attach to a power drill. For me, I just shove it up the pipe (phrasing) each section at a time and have the shop vac set up right at the exit to catch anything that comes out. No muss, no fuss, done in about 15 minutes, most of which is getting the dryer out of the way. It's on my list of yearly maintenance.
Depends. Duct cleaning is a good idea assuming we're talking about metal ductwork that is not insulated on the inside, and you hire a good company with decent equipment. Some companies which advertise duct cleaning are a joke. Stay away from the carpet cleaning guys who say they also clean ductwork, unless they have a dedicated rig. Also steer clear of anyone who uses a portable unit. Reputable companies will show up with a truck that looks like this. These are the guys we subcontract, and they do such a great job that I would rather use them than buy a truck and compete with them. I have them do my house every few years.
Thanks for the info, I am needing ducts clean, 47 year old home, probably never been professionally cleaned.
Just be careful if you have soft ducts as well. The company I used tore up at least two of my soft ducts, then denied it. Going to replace those sections with metal.
The foreclosed house I bought was built in 1966. The ducts were the typical galvanized sheet metal with the interior insulation/sound reducer. It was so bad I did not even try to get it cleaned, full tear out of the old ducts and replaced with insulated flex. In my case it was easy to do, lower level fed up from basement, upper level fed down from attic, one main from basement to attic. No sheet rock work necessary.
I worked for a friend for a few months doing duct cleaning. I never would of considered doing it prior. The nastiness in some of the ducts that was pulled out was pretty crazy. I would consider doing it for sure. As Jbraun stated. Make sure they use a real duct cleaning truck. If they don't cut a hole in the trunk, I would question how good of a job they are doing. We did a bunch of new construction houses, a few that were " cleaned " by a carpet cleaning company that used a hose and a brush and they were far from cleaned.
I appreciate all of the responses. I'm going to be replacing the whole system soon. Got almost 21 years out of the original system and I don't want to go into winter only to have it fail on a Friday at 6:00p.m. I'm just not sure if it would be best to do the cleaning before or after. I have a single zone system now. I may go dual zone (2 story house - all bedrooms upstairs) and add a whole house humidifier (already a thread on that).
