Flexible insulated air ducts running through a dark attic, with light rays from a louvered vent illuminating airborne dust particles.

Duct Cleaning in Auburn, AL

Tell us about your home, and a licensed contractor who covers Lee County will get in touch.

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It takes about a minute.

Step 1 of 3: Equipment

What kind of equipment?*

A flexible metallic HVAC duct running across an insulated attic floor toward an air handler unit.

Wind events push more into your ducts than people realize

Lee County has logged 52 damaging wind events over the past ten years. Wind like that drives dust and grit into any gap around a vent hood or duct joint, and once it's inside, it settles rather than blows back out.

Your furnace only has to run November through March here, five months a year. The rest of the year, the air conditioner is still pulling air through those same ducts, and whatever settled in during the last windstorm gets carried into the rooms you live in every time the system runs.

5 months: November through March, your furnace pushes air through your ducts
5 months: May through September, your air conditioner does the same

Isometric cutaway illustration of a single-story house showing interior rooms with furniture, a toilet, and a network of ventilation ducts connected to a unit on the wall, under a shingled gable roof.

Your ducts carry heat November through March and cooled air May through September.

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NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals

How often should air ducts be cleaned?: There is no fixed schedule that fits every house. A contractor looking at your ducts can tell you whether dust, pet hair, or a past renovation has built up enough to matter. If you notice dust settling fast around the vents or the air smells stale when the furnace kicks on, that is a better sign than any calendar date.
Is air duct cleaning worth it?: It is worth it when there is a real reason behind it, like visible dust at the vents, a musty smell, or work that was just done on the ductwork itself. It will not lower your heating bill or fix a furnace that is running rough. What it does is clear out what has settled in the ducts so the air moving through your house from November through March is cleaner.
What does air duct cleaning involve?: A contractor connects a vacuum to the duct system to pull air through it while agitating the inside of the ducts to loosen dust and debris. Each vent gets opened and cleaned, and the return side gets the same treatment. Afterward the system runs the way it did before, just moving cleaner air through it.

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