Duct Cleaning in Boston, MA
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Eight months of heat pushes a lot of air through your ducts
Your furnace runs October through May here, eight months of the year. On the cold nights that average 23°F all winter, it cycles on and off for hours at a stretch, pulling household dust, pet hair, and fine debris through the ductwork every time it fires. That buildup lines the inside of the ducts and gets pushed into every room the system heats.
Most homes in Suffolk County are not single-family, and shared walls and older duct runs give dust more places to collect over time. What settles in those ducts does not stay there. It reaches the coils and blower parts too, and the system has to work harder to move the same amount of air through them.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace pushes air through your ducts
- 2 months
- July through August, your air conditioner does the same
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
- How often should air ducts be cleaned?
- Most homes don't need it on a fixed schedule at all. If anyone in the house has allergies, or you've had a renovation that left dust behind, it's worth doing once after the work settles. Pets, or a water leak near the ductwork, are also reasons to move sooner rather than wait.
- Is air duct cleaning worth it?
- It depends on what's actually happening in the ducts. If you can see dust building up at the vents, or the house seems dustier than it used to, cleaning them makes sense. If nobody's having breathing trouble and the system runs fine, it's not something you need to chase.
- What does air duct cleaning involve?
- A contractor uses tools to loosen dust and debris from inside the ductwork, then a vacuum system pulls it out before it resettles. The supply and return ducts get checked, along with the grilles and registers where dust collects. The furnace or air handler often gets a look too, since the blower and coil sit in the same airflow path.