Dust Buster?

November 15, 2007 2:32 PM

Has anyone paid to have their air ducts cleaned?

We've got quite a bit of dust in the house and are considering having someone come and suck all the dust and debris from our air ducts. If you've had this done how much did it cost and did it help with air quality and dust in the house?

posted by aspenbaloo to home & garden (6 comments total)

While you are considering it read this...

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/airduct.html

Seemed like good, unbiased info.
posted by bkeene12 at 2:43 PM on November 15, 2007

I did this about a year ago, and, while I would say that the dust situation in our house is probably a little better now, for a while it was much worse.

The guy really worked the ducts over and I couldn't believe the amount of junk he got out of there. But for a while after that there was a lot of dust around and he also kind of dislodged several of the ducts with his shenanigans and I had to hook some back up.

I don't think I'd do it again, but, now that I've done it I don't think it'll need to be done for another 20 years.
posted by trbrts at 2:53 PM on November 15, 2007

I did just a few weeks ago, after a load of blow-in insulation got into the furnace and started flying out the ducts. It cost around $400. The house no longer smells dusty when the heater comes on.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:31 PM on November 15, 2007

I've had it done in an older house. I'm intensely allergic to dust and the previous owner was not a clean person. There's only so much you can do with filters.

We noticed an improvement in air flow right away -- vents that didn't really work well before suddenly worked, and we had to have the house rebalanced.

At first, there was a big increase in dust and I could hardly sleep at night for a week. Then things got better.
posted by SpecialK at 4:13 PM on November 15, 2007

I had it done last year, for about $200 as I recall. The guy I used charged by the vent, and I have ten of them. Don't know if that's standard practice or not.

I know the EPA doesn't buy it, but it was largely done in an attempt to ameliorate my girlfriend's cat dander allergies. It seemed to make things better for her, but the placebo effect works wonders sometimes. It didn't make a significant difference in the amount of dust in the house, that I noticed, but it did once and for all take care of the annoying rattle of little bits of whatnot that had gotten into the ductwork over the years.

Unexpected bonus: it was also a relatively inexpensive way to have a heating professional inspect the ductwork, tighten seals where necessary, etc. etc. He definitely improved the airflow of our system (it's a 100 year old house) and had good advice about the furnace and AC. It was worth it to me.
posted by mumkin at 5:02 PM on November 15, 2007

Cost a few hundred, improved air quality (as judged by the decrease in itchy eyes symptoms), but didn't have a significant impact on dust levels.

When friends had their ducts blown out, the guy found a dead mouse in one of the ducts.
posted by dws at 5:47 PM on November 15, 2007