Our home is 30 years old and the duct work has never been cleaned. A friend said that he could clean the ducts with an air compressor--forcing everything down to the filters in the furnace. He has given us a really reasonable price but I am concerned when we heard that fairly powerful equipment is needed to get the job done right. Is this true? How are ducts cleaned?
What has been suggested here does not make sense. To remove the dirt build up in the heating duct system requires removal by vacuum and not using a compressor to blow the dust all over the house. Remember you have main trunk lines for both heat and cold air, and off of these are all of the duct work runs that go to the various room registers.
If you were to use the force of a compressor to start blowing into one of the heat runs, it would force the air to blow out into any open run in the system. The result would be dust all over the house.
Well, as you might expect, there are a lot of companies out there that offer to clean air ducts. Carpet cleaning companies, heating companies and even Sears will do this for you. You can check with these companies because they are very competitive in today's poor economy. You are bound to find a good deal from a reputable company.
The best method that I know of is one that uses both a brush and vacuum system to clean. One of these systems is the Rotobrush system that uses video assistance as it uses the brush and vacuum to clean the duct work. With any type of video assistance that allows you to look into the duct work, you can actually see how much dirt there is. You can check with the professionals to see if they offer this system or one similar to it.
You can do the cleaning yourself but it will involve a lot of work. You will need to remove registers and possible take some of the duct work apart to get inside to clean. Unless you are able to rent some pretty expensive equipment and know what you are doing, you may be better off in the long run, hiring one of the companies mentioned above.
You can get more help on cleaning air ducts by clicking on the following link. Air Duct Cleaning
There are some great sites and blogs that can give you information and help. Click on the following link for more help.
Heating and Cooling Blogs.
I hope this helps. Rick
Rick Maselli Found and Editor of Shworoom411.com