The honest case for duct cleaning

What the EPA actually says

Starting here, because it is the thing most of this industry hopes you never look up.

The EPA's published position is that duct cleaning has never been shown to actually prevent health problems, and that particle levels in homes do not necessarily rise because of dirty ducts. They do not call it pointless. They say the health claims are unsupported.

Anybody telling you this will fix your family's allergies is selling something nobody has demonstrated. We would rather lead with that and let you weigh the real benefits.

What it genuinely does

Removes what is physically inside the ductwork. That is the whole claim, and on a lot of Scottsdale properties it is substantial.

On a forty-year-old McCormick Ranch system nobody has ever opened, that is a considerable volume sitting directly in the path of the air pushed into your rooms.

On a seasonal property, it is a season's worth of settled material that packs down while nothing moves and then gets pushed out in the first hours after somebody switches the system on.

On a newer build, it is construction material sealed in because ducts are installed before drywall and nothing in the schedule assigns anybody to clean them.

On a system with a genuine problem, rodent evidence, insect activity or a damp history, it removes the material causing it.

What it does not do

Fix allergies or asthma

Covered above and not demonstrated, so not claimed. If indoor air is the actual goal, a better filter changed on schedule does more than an annual duct cleaning at a fraction of the cost. That argues against our own service and it is true.

Cut your power bill

You will see percentages. They are invented. Severe blockage restricts airflow, but ordinary settled dust in a working system is not what drives a Scottsdale summer bill.

Replace changing your filter

The most important sentence here, and it matters double in a house with several systems. The filter is the real defense. Where a house has three units, one filter almost always gets neglected, and that third of the ductwork shows it.

Solve an HVAC problem

If one zone never cools, if something smells at every cycle, if there is water where there should not be, those are HVAC questions. Cleaning ducts to address a condensate issue would be charging you for the wrong job.

Who should do it

• Any house past twenty years where nobody has opened the system
• Seasonal properties, before closing up or shortly after reopening
• Newer builds and recent remodels with debris in the runs
• Anyone taking over a house somebody else lived in
• Visible dust from registers at start-up
• A persistent odor nobody can locate
• Rodent or insect evidence

Who should not

Being equally clear about this is the point of the page.

House occupied year round, not new, no odor, no visible dust, no pets, no rodent evidence, and a decent filter changed on schedule. Leave it. Ring when one of those changes.

You will hear that on the phone rather than after we arrive. A call we talk you out of costs us an hour. A job that should not have happened costs you well over a thousand dollars on a house this size.

What a $49 ad is really selling

Forty-nine dollars does not cover the labor to clean a whole system, or the drive. So one of two things gives.

Scope narrows to the first stretch of each run, the part a vacuum reaches from the register, which was never where the material sat.

Or the figure climbs once somebody has inspected, your morning is committed and the registers are already off. On a house with three systems, that is where the per-system multiplier appears.

Our number is on this website, it is per opening, and you can calculate it before you ring.

Questions