Duct Cleaning in Geneva, NY
Tell us about your home, and a licensed contractor who covers Ontario County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eight months of heating pushes air through your ducts
Your furnace runs October through May here, eight months of the year. On the nights that average 19°F, it cycles on and off for hours at a stretch, pushing air through the same ducts again and again. Dust and pet hair settle in the bends and joints, and every cycle stirs some of it back into the house.
Geneva has seen 14 winter storms and 195 damaging wind events over the past ten years. Wind that strong finds the gaps around windows and doors and pulls outside air in, and a lot of what comes with it ends up in the ductwork. With most homes here owner-occupied, whatever settles into those ducts stays somebody's problem to deal with, not a landlord's.
- 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?
- There's no fixed number that fits every home, but a contractor can tell you what your ducts need by looking at them. If anyone in the house has allergies, or you've had rodents, a leak, or a renovation that filled the ducts with dust or debris, it's worth doing sooner rather than later. Homes here run the furnace October through May, so the ducts are moving air through the house most of the year. Keeping an eye on the vents and grilles for dust buildup is a better guide than waiting a set number of years.
- Is air duct cleaning worth it?
- It's worth it when there's a real reason for it, not on a fixed schedule regardless of what's going on in the house. Dust, pet hair, and debris built up in the ducts get pushed into every room every time the furnace or air conditioner runs. If someone in the house has allergies or asthma, or you can see dust kicking out of the vents, cleaning will make a noticeable difference. If the ducts look clean and no one's having breathing trouble, you likely don't need it yet.
- What does air duct cleaning involve?
- A contractor connects a vacuum system to the ductwork and uses brushes or air tools to knock loose dust and debris from the inside of the ducts, then pulls it out through the vacuum. They'll also check the supply and return vents and clean the grilles. Some contractors clean the blower and coil area too, since dust that settles there gets pulled into the duct system anyway. The furnace filter still needs regular changing between cleanings, since the filter is what catches dust going forward, and the ducts are just what carries the air.