Duct Cleaning in Chapel Hill, NC
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Seven months of heating pushes a lot of air through your ducts
Your furnace runs October through April here, seven months a year. Every one of those months, your ducts are moving the air that heats your home, and whatever settles inside them rides along with it. On the nights that average 31°F, the furnace cycles on and off again and again just to hold the temperature, so that air keeps moving through the same ducts night after night.
Orange County has seen 8 winter storms and 121 damaging wind events over the past ten years. Storms like these knock out power, and a quarter of North Carolina households went at least a day without it in 2024. When the power drops and comes back, the furnace starts back up and pushes through whatever collected in the ducts while the system sat idle, sending it straight into the rooms you live in.
- 7 months
- October through April, your furnace pushes air through your ducts
- 5 months
- May through September, your air conditioner does the same
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
- How often should air ducts be cleaned?
- There's no fixed schedule that fits every home, but a contractor can look at the ductwork and tell you if it's due. Homes with pets, a recent renovation, or someone with allergies tend to need it sooner, since dust and pet dander build up faster in those cases. If you can see dust blowing out of the vents or coming from the returns, that's a sign to move on it rather than wait.
- Is air duct cleaning worth it?
- It depends on what's going on in the ducts. If there's visible dust buildup, a musty smell when the system runs, or you just finished a renovation that left drywall dust in the house, cleaning them is worth doing. If none of that applies, cleaning them on a set schedule for its own sake won't do much, since ducts that are sealed and dry don't collect debris fast. A contractor can check the ductwork and tell you whether it needs cleaning now or can wait.
- What does air duct cleaning involve?
- A technician connects a vacuum system to the ductwork to create negative pressure, then uses brushes or air whips to knock dust and debris loose from the inside of the ducts so it gets pulled into the vacuum instead of blown into the house. Every supply and return vent gets cleaned this way, and the grilles get wiped down or removed and washed. If the furnace or air handler has a blower compartment, that gets cleaned too, since dust collects there as air moves through it.