Pros and Cons of Air Duct Cleaning – Is It Worth It?

Have you been thinking about getting your air ducts clean but you’re not sure if it’s a good idea or if you really need to do it at all? Well today we’re going to be talking about the pros and cons of getting your air ducts cleaned and if you watch till the end of the video I’m going to give you some great ideas you can use to make sure that if you do decide to get your air ducts cleaned you’re going to have the best result possible.
This is Monday Mornings with Mark. Hi I’m your host Mark J Schmidt of Remax Country and Movement.com where I help you get the most out of the real estate market and your home. If you’re new here be sure to like this video, hit the subscribe button and make sure you tap on that bell so you don’t miss out…

Pros	Cons
Potential to reduce unpleasant odors originating in ducts (as claimed by companies).	Not shown to prevent health problems (EPA).
May reduce mold spores if visible mold is lab-confirmed and cleaning is performed.	Routine cleaning is not recommended as regular HVAC maintenance; may be an unnecessary expense.
Removes debris, pest evidence, and visible dust when present.	Many vague social media offers can be scams; high risk with unverifiable companies.
Might improve HVAC efficiency if ducts are significantly obstructed.	Dust tends to adhere to duct surfaces and filters capture most dust; benefits may be minimal.
Helpful when dust is visibly blowing from vents—cleaning can address the source.	Suspected “mold” may not be mold; requires lab testing, so cleaning might be unnecessary.

A Common Question

My friend Joe turned to me the other day. He said, “Mark I’ve got a question for you. I’ve seen a lot about air vent cleaning. I wonder if this is something that we should do in our home.”
And you know what—that is such a great question because you know what—a lot of people don’t know about professional duct cleaning. A lot of people maybe they’ll see a post on Facebook, maybe they’ll get a postcard in the mail, but besides that they really don’t have any experience or any firsthand knowledge with home duct services and they’re not sure if it’s something they actually use.

What Professional Duct Cleaning Companies Claim

So to start, why don’t we look at what the professional duct cleaning companies actually say. I looked at a few different websites for different HVAC duct cleaning companies and they all pretty much said the same thing.
First of all, they said that air vent cleaning would improve your health. They said that it can reduce unpleasant odors, it can reduce mold spores in your home, and it also said that it can make your HVAC system run more efficiently.

What the EPA Says

Now what’s interesting about these claims is that I then went to the EPA’s website. So as you know, the EPA is the Environmental Protection Agency, and here’s what the EPA had to say:
They said duct cleaning has never been shown to actually prevent health problems. Furthermore, studies don’t demonstrate that dust levels in your home actually increase because of dirty air ducts. That’s because any dust that does get into your air ducts really tends to stick to the inside of the air duct.
But frankly, there’s not a lot of dust in my opinion that actually gets into the ducts. A lot of these people who are advertising on Facebook for their home duct services will show you an air duct that is choked with dust and then they’ll show it really clean. But you know, to have an air duct that is so choked with dust is pretty rare. As long as you’re going and keeping your air filter maintained in your furnace, you really shouldn’t have that much dust in your air ducts.

How to Know If You Should Clean Your Air Ducts

So how do you know if you should actually get your air ducts cleaned? Well the first thing you can do is you can actually do your own visual inspection. You can go and take off the vent covers, the registers around your home, use a flashlight, take a look and see: does it look like it’s really dusty? Is there anything in there that will cause you to think this is not as clean as it could be? If that’s the case, you might want to get your air ducts cleaned.

If you see that you have visible mold growth inside your ducts, at that point you might want to consider getting your ducts cleaned. Now here’s the thing: you may see something that looks like mold but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s actually mold. The only way to tell if it’s really mold is to take a sample and send it to a laboratory to be tested. It’s pretty inexpensive to do that but the only way you can definitively know for sure is to get that sample tested at a lab. If it does turn out to be mold, at that point it might be a good idea to get your ducts cleaned.

If you see rodents or insects or any evidence of either one of those in your ducts, it might be a good idea to get your ducts cleaned. And one that I think is pretty common sense: if you turn on your furnace or your central air and you see dust blowing through your vents, at that point you might have a dust problem and you’ll definitely want to get a company in to take a look at that.

Additional Signs That Duct Cleaning Might Be Needed

Choosing a Reputable Company

Now if you decide to get your ducts cleaned, how do you know that you’re choosing a reputable company? Well first of all, be careful with anyone you find on Facebook. I’ve seen a lot of posts on Facebook and you can actually search this—just search for air vent cleaning scam—and you can find a number of posts that are very similar in their verbiage, very similar pictures. It’s like they all copy from one another. There’s no mention of a company name. They usually say something like: “Hey we’re in the area doing an HVAC duct cleaning and we need three more jobs to give the discount or make it worth it or whatever.”
Be very careful of those people. You’ll see that those people typically are coming from accounts that are pretty new accounts. They have no way of getting in touch with them and you are most likely to be scammed if you’re going with a company like that.
One thing you can do is you can reach out to the National Air Duct Cleaners Association and they can put you in touch with some air duct cleaners who are reputable and who are known to them. Another thing you can do is ask whatever company you meet with—ask them for references. Ask them if you can speak to people who they’ve cleaned in the past and see what they felt about their services. You can also reach out to the Better Business Bureau or to any Consumer Affairs division of your local city or county governments.

What to Avoid

Now one thing I found interesting on the EPA’s website was that they said you should steer clear of any company that makes sweeping claims about the health benefits of having your air ducts cleaned. You should also steer clear of companies who say that you need to have your air ducts cleaned routinely as part of the regular maintenance of your HVAC system.
First of all, remember I said before there’s been no studies done that show that professional duct cleaning will improve your health. And really you don’t need to have routine air vent cleaning on your home. If you do need to have it done at all, every few years I would say at the most. Definitely not anything routine.

Final Thoughts

So if you follow these tips, if you determine for yourself whether you need to get your air ducts cleaned in the first place and then do your homework to make sure you’re picking the right company, you’re gonna have no problem and you’re gonna continue to have years of enjoyment of your home.
Now listen, if you have questions about maintaining your home or any part of the cleaning there’s a fantastic resource—it’s my website. You can find me at  Airductcleaning-ATL