Home Air Duct Cleaning

There are a number of statistics that say that while the outside air and water in most places in the United States have experienced marked decrease in the amount of pollution as measured in parts per million, the air when measured within our homes has experienced a ten fold increase in pollution versus twenty years ago.

I read a statistic from a home air duct cleaning company in Dallas that said that the average home’s interior air had from two to five times as much pollution as the outside air around it. How can this be when the outside air has experienced a decrease in pollution, then it would seem to follow that the amount of pollution in the air of your home would be less.

Actually, quite the opposite has occurred. In our quest to reduce energy costs and waste, builders and manufacturers have been working together to create more efficient windows that keep heat in the house during the winter and the cold air in during the summer.

Insulation, moisture barriers and waterproof basements along with much improved seals around windows and doors have created a house that no longer breathes. In days gone by you could hear the wind howl and make strange and funny noises as it entered your home through multiple small cracks and crevices or seams in the exterior of your house.

You could feel cool air around the outside casement of your windows during the summer months as the air conditioned air leaked out. Now if we hear any kind of air coming in or going out of our homes it is time to get the caulk gun out and make sure nothing escapes or gets in. Only a few years back replacing windows was a very expensive proposition and you did not have a great deal of companies to choose from.

Most windows were custom built and had to be replaced with new custom windows. With the advent of the super home centers like Menard’s, Home Depot, and Lowes standard size windows of various types and quality became available to the homeowner who wanted to tackle the job himself. Window companies like Champion and Excel now advertise regularly that you can get tax credits for replacing your windows.

Our government has subsidized the window industry by offering a fifteen hundred dollar tax credit if you replace your old windows with new ones with low E rated glass. Some of the most efficient windows at keeping in the energy and not letting any escape are triple pane with inert gas between the panes to add insulation factor to the window.

All of this to prove the point that we do a lot to stop fresh air to enter our home’s interior, nor do we let the existing air inside escape. Before the advent of central air conditioning, the common practice was to have all your screens in so that the windows and doors could be left open to create cross breezes and to keep the house cooler than the outside air.

The average home now has between two hundred and five hundred percent more pollutants in the air as measured by parts per million than as little as twenty years ago. No wonder respiratory illnesses and allergy have seen a great increase over that same period of time. More and more children are now diagnosed with asthma and put on inhalers.

Too many chemicals, irritants, allergens and just plain dirt are our home’s air. The average home air duct cleaning service will cost between five hundred ($500) and one thousand dollars ($1000). All reputable cleaning companies will tell you that you will not need to have a complete air conditioning duct cleaning very often.

In fact, they should tell you that it is not necessary for at least three to five years after your current one before it would need it again. Properly keeping up with replacing your furnace duct cleaning filters every couple of months, installing electrostatic air cleaners, adding HEPA filtration to your heating and air conditioning system are all ways to delay the next need for home air duct cleaning.

Finding a company that is reputable and fully professionally capable of properly providing home air duct cleaning is actually fairly easy. There are several companies that manufacture the higher volume vacuum systems, high capacity compressors and the right kind of agitator to loosen the debris in your duct work.

Over the last several years, due to the increase in demand for home air duct cleaning has allowed the average cleaning service to purchase the necessary equipment to clean air ducts to add air duct cleaning for both the home and office to their list of services.