How to Prepare for Air Duct Cleaning

PORTLAND, OR – Are you new to the world of professional air duct cleaning? If so, you are not alone! HVAC maintenance easily falls to the bottom of many homeowner’s priority list. If you are purchasing a home, you might be surprised to find out the previous owners never had the air ducts cleaned, despite living there for 30 years. If that’s you, or if it’s been over five years, we’d highly recommend giving us a call to take care of that for you. And, since it’ll be your first time calling, we thought we’d provide you with a list of items that are good to know for the office so we can provide you with our best time and cost estimate.

Vents

Did you know that there might be two very different things going on behind the vent covers of your home? Primarily, the vents are serving as registers, which are output vents that are expelling either cold or hot air, depending on the time of year.  However, a few of the vents are returns. These are typically larger, occasionally more square, and are what takes the air in for your furnace. If you aren’t sure which vents are what, we have a handy chart that can help us determine a rough number of ducts depending on the square footage of your home. You can also do a brief walkthrough of your home and count the number of vents prior to calling or while you’re on the phone with us.

We don’t just need to know vents in general. For us to provide our best estimate for you, we ask for the number of registers on the floor, the number of registers on the wall, and the number of registers on the ceiling. Then we’ll ask for you to count the return ducts. Typically in homes less than 2,000 square feet.

The other thing we need to know about the vents is how high they are if you have any on the ceiling or wall. If we can’t access the vents with our typical five foot ladder, we have to bring a larger one, so make sure to note that before calling.

Dryer Vent

Your dryer vent needs cleaned more often than your HVAC, so it might be the right time to get them both cleaned at the same time. If that’s the case for you, we just ask that you know where the dryer vent outputs (on ground floor level and easily accessible, or does it go through the roof?). When we ask if all vents are accessible with a 5-ft ladder, this includes your dryer vent.

When you are speaking with the office, please mention if you are having any trouble with your dryer vent. This could include loads needing multiple cycles to dry, potential clogging, and error codes. If you are dealing with any of those complications (or others), make sure to  let us know so that we know how best to help you when we arrive. We have removed animals from dryer ducts before, as well as significant amounts of lint and dryer debris. It’s important to have your dryer vent cleaned once a year in order to keep your dryer at maximum efficiency as well as to prevent any kind of fire hazard.

Preparation

When you are scheduled for an air duct cleaning, the preparation is fairly simple. Much like all other services we perform, we do ask that you have  parking space 50 feet from the entrance of your home and a working water spigot 50 feet from the parking space. We also ask that you move any fragile items away from the register before the technician arrives. Finally, if you acquire new furnace filters prior to his arrival, we’d be glad to swap those filters out for you at the end of the job so you are starting completely fresh. Please note that in order for us to change the furnace filters, the furnace needs to be easily accessible.

Process

At A+ Carpet Cleaning, we use a system called RamAir, there is a video on our website you can take a look at that shows you how it works. Mike, the owner, did a lot of research on different systems, and he likes this one the best because he feels that it cleaned the ducts the best & eliminated potential damage to the ducts as well as not bringing debris from air ducts into your home. We utilize the RamAir equipment that works off our truck mounted machine. We go to each individual vent with our hoses and a clear cover that goes over the vent. Then, we insert an air compressor hose that goes deep into the duct, about 20-40 feet, to blast any debris towards the register as we draw it back out. There’s also a vacuum hose attached to the vent cover that will bring any debris that comes out into our truck-mounted machine. In addition, for floor vents, we go into the vent with a high powered vacuum and remove any heavier or larger debris that we were unable to remove with the air compressor hose, then we power vacuum the register & secure it back in place.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How do we clean dryer vents? We clean dryer vents by inserting an air compressor hose that goes up the vent and blasts any existing lint towards the output as we retrieve the hose. The debris is brought back to our truck mounted machine.
• Do we do rodent removal? Yes, we can.
• Do we deodorize/sanitize? Yes, we can.
• Can we clean dryer vents that go out to the roof? Yes, we are willing to clean those kinds of vents if the dryer is easily removable because we can only clean them from the inside.
• Can you clean air ducts in an older home? We have cleaned air ducts in homes that are over 100 years old! Don’t let the year your home was built hold you back from giving us a call. We’ll ask you what year your home was built in as part of the process. If there are any concerns, we’ll ask follow up questions to make sure we’re being transparent if there are any out-of-the-normal variables affecting your home’s air duct cleaning.

When to Clean Air Ducts

You can have your air ducts cleaned any time of the year. All you have to do is call 503-314-7453, and we’ll take care of you. If there are any questions this article did not answer, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’ll hope to hear from you soon!

A+ Carpet Cleaning – Portland
2885 NW 111th Ct, Portland, OR 97229
(503) 314-7453
https://www.carpetcleanerportland.com/