Air Duct Cleaning in Elgin & the Fox Valley

When Air Duct Cleaning Helps

Professional duct cleaning removes dust, debris and allergens from the duct system so your HVAC system runs more efficiently and your home stays cleaner. It does the most good in these situations.

• You just finished a renovation. Drywall dust, sawdust and insulation fibers get pulled into the returns during construction and blow back out for months. This is the most common reason we clean ducts, and the results are obvious.
• You just bought the house. You don’t know whether the previous owners smoked, had pets or ever changed the filter. A cleaning gives you a clean starting point.
• You can see mold on the duct interior or the registers. Visible growth needs to come out, and the moisture source needs to be found. Cleaning without fixing the moisture just delays the return.
• Rodents or insects have been in the ducts. Droppings, nesting material and dead pests in the ductwork are a health issue and a smell issue.
• The ducts have never been cleaned in an older home. A 1960s to 1990s split-level or ranch with original sheet-metal ducts, especially one that ran for years without a good filter, often has a layer of debris in the trunk lines.
• Debris blows out of the registers when the blower starts. Puffs of dust at startup, or dust on the register faces that comes back after you wipe it, means there’s a supply of it in the ducts.
• The dryer takes two cycles to dry a load. That’s a dryer vent, not a duct, but it’s the same visit. See the dryer vent section below.
• A musty smell every time the system runs. Sometimes it’s the coil or the drain pan. Sometimes it’s the ducts. We check both.

Honest note: the EPA says routine cleaning of air ducts hasn’t been shown to prevent health problems, and that most household dust comes in from outside and off people and pets rather than out of the ductwork. The EPA does say cleaning makes sense when there’s visible mold, pests or enough debris that it’s blowing into the house, which is the list above. So we don’t push hvac duct cleaning on a schedule or as an add-on. If your ducts are clean, we’ll say so and point you at the filter, the coil or the humidity instead. Our indoor air quality page covers that side.

What’s Included in Our Air Duct Cleaning

One flat, written price covers the whole air path for one HVAC system.

Ask about a filter upgrade while the system is open. A media air cleaner on the return is what keeps clean ducts clean. See AprilAire filtration and air purifier installation.

Our Equipment

Real duct cleaning takes real suction. Here’s what we bring to the house.

The heart of the job is a gas-powered 20 HP blower moving 5,100 CFM. It connects to the trunk line and creates a continuous negative-pressure vacuum on the entire duct system while we work, so everything we loosen is pulled toward the vacuum and out of the house rather than drifting into your rooms. That negative pressure is the difference between cleaning a duct system and stirring one up.

Working with it is a gas-powered 13 HP agitation system delivering 29.5 CFM at 175 PSI. Compressed-air whips and nozzles run through every trunk and branch to break loose the dirt and debris stuck to the duct walls, which the vacuum then carries away. Agitation without vacuum makes a mess; vacuum without agitation leaves the buildup where it is. The two run together.

Both units are truck-mounted and gas-powered, so they don’t depend on your home’s electrical circuits and nothing runs through a household vacuum. Access openings cut in the trunks are closed and sealed when the job is done.

Dryer Vent Cleaning in Elgin and the Fox Valley

Included with every duct cleaning, and worth doing on its own.

Lint builds up in the dryer duct between the machine and the outside wall, and it’s flammable. A restricted dryer vent makes the dryer run hotter and longer, and it’s one of the most common causes of house fires that start in a laundry room. Long duct runs, runs with several elbows, and older flexible foil duct collect lint fastest, and a lot of Fox Valley homes have dryers in a basement or an interior laundry room with a long run to the outside.

• Signs your dryer vent needs cleaning: clothes take more than one cycle to dry, the top of the dryer is hot to the touch, the laundry room is humid or smells like burning lint, the outside flap doesn’t open when the dryer runs, or lint is collecting around the outside termination.
• What we do: clean the full duct run from the dryer connection to the outside termination, clear the exterior hood and flap, and confirm airflow at the outlet with the dryer running.
• When to do it: at least once a year for most households, more often for large families or long runs. It’s included with duct cleaning and can be scheduled by itself.

Airflow Diagnostics and Duct Sealing: When Cleaning Isn’t the Answer

Uneven rooms, dust that comes back and a system that runs and runs are usually leaky or undersized ducts, not dirty ones. We can measure that.

We measure total external static pressure across the furnace or air handler with a manometer to see how hard the blower is working against the ductwork, and we measure duct leakage with Minneapolis DuctBlaster equipment, which pressurizes the duct system and tells us how much of your heated and cooled air leaks into the basement, crawl space, attic or wall cavities before it reaches a room. Our owner is NCI airflow trained, and every diagnostic ends with numbers in writing.

If the DuctBlaster shows meaningful leakage, sealing the joints, seams, boots and plenum connections with mastic or approved foil tape usually does more for comfort and bills than a cleaning: starved rooms get their share of air, the return stops pulling basement dust and humidity into the house, and the system runs fewer hours. If static pressure is high, the fix is an undersized return, a restrictive filter, a dirty coil or crushed flex duct. Many homes need sealing more than cleaning. Some need both, and cleaning first, then sealing, is the right order.

Static pressure is already part of every tune-up on our maintenance plan, so a plan visit is a good time to ask. Diagnostics and sealing are quoted separately from cleaning so you can test first and decide with numbers.

What to Expect on the Visit

A full air duct cleaning with dryer vent on a typical Fox Valley home takes most of a day.

1. Walkthrough. We count registers and returns, trace the trunk lines, check the blower and coil and look at the dryer run. If the ducts don’t need cleaning, this is where we say so.
2. Written price before work. Based on what we found: one system, number of registers and returns, access, and the dryer run. You approve it before anything is opened.
3. Set up. Floor protection down, registers removed and bagged, the vacuum connected to the trunk and brought up to negative pressure.
4. Clean. Compressed-air agitation through every supply and return run while the vacuum pulls the debris out of the house. Registers and grilles cleaned. Dryer duct and vent cleared.
5. Close up and check. Access openings sealed, registers reinstalled, new filter if you’ve left one for us, system run and airflow checked at the registers.
6. Optional diagnostics. Static pressure and DuctBlaster leakage testing can be done the same day, and the results tell you whether sealing should be next.

You’ll hear the equipment running outside and there will be activity at every register, but debris goes out to the truck, not into the rooms.

What Air Duct Cleaning Costs

How we price it, and why we don’t guess over the phone.

The price depends on the size of the duct system, the number of registers and returns, how accessible the trunk lines are, the length of the dryer run and how much is actually in the ducts. A three-bedroom ranch with a basement trunk is a different job from a two-story with flex duct in the attic. We inspect first and give you a written, flat price before we open anything. The price you approve is the price you pay.

Airflow diagnostics and duct sealing are quoted separately. Larger projects can be financed; you can prequalify in about 2 minutes with no impact to your credit score.

Why Have an HVAC Contractor Clean Your Ducts

The ducts are one part of a system. We service the whole system.

Air Duct Cleaning Across the Fox Valley

Based in Elgin, we serve homes throughout Kane, McHenry, DuPage and DeKalb counties.

• Elgin
• South Elgin
• St. Charles
• Aurora
• Bartlett
• Streamwood
• Huntley
• Plato Center
• Sycamore
• Carpentersville
• West Dundee
• East Dundee
• Algonquin
• Gilberts
• Hampshire
• Pingree Grove
• Campton Hills
• Geneva
• Batavia
• Barrington
• Hoffman Estates
• Schaumburg
• Burlington
• Marengo
• Wayne
• Sleepy Hollow

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