Duct Cleaning in Durham, NC
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Seven months of heating pulls a lot of air through your ducts
Your furnace runs October through April in Durham County. That is seven months of air moving through the same ductwork, picking up dust and whatever else settles in the return before pushing it back into the house.
With 104 damaging wind events and 7 winter storms recorded here over the past ten years, and a quarter of North Carolina households losing power for a day or more last year, ducts here also sit idle after outages, then start back up carrying whatever collected while the system was off. In a county where most homes are single-family and owner-occupied, that buildup is something the same household breathes for years, not something that gets cleared out between tenants.
- 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 is no fixed schedule that fits every home. A contractor can look at your ducts and tell you whether there is buildup worth removing. If you notice dust settling around the vents faster than it used to, or the air coming out smells musty, that is a reason to have someone look sooner rather than later.
- Is air duct cleaning worth it?
- It is worth it when there is a real reason behind it, not as something to do on a routine. Dust and debris sitting in the ducts can blow back into the rooms you spend time in, and a contractor can check whether that is happening in your system before recommending the work. If the ducts are clean, there is nothing to gain by doing it anyway.
- What does air duct cleaning involve?
- A contractor connects a vacuum system to the ductwork, then uses brushes or compressed air tools to loosen dust and debris from inside the ducts so it can be pulled out through the vacuum. The supply and return vents get cleaned too, and the coil and blower if those are part of the job. The furnace or air handler stays off during the work so nothing gets pulled back into the system while it is open.