Duct Cleaning in Miles City, MT
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Nine months of heating pulls dust through your ducts
Your furnace runs September through May here, nine months of the year. Every one of those months it is pulling household air through the return ducts and pushing it back out through the supply side. That is nine months of dust, pet hair and whatever else is in the air settling in the ductwork instead of passing through once and being done with it.
Miles City has seen 94 damaging wind events over the past ten years. Wind like that drives dust and debris into a house through every gap it can find, and a lot of it ends up in the return air and settles in the ducts. With winter nights averaging 11°F, the furnace is working hard on the coldest nights to move air through ducts that have been collecting this for months, and a duct choked with buildup makes the whole system work harder to heat the house.
- 9 months
- September through May, your furnace pushes air through your ducts
- 3 months
- June 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 of years that fits every home. If anyone in the house has allergies, if you've had a rodent problem, or if a renovation kicked up dust and debris, cleaning them sooner makes sense. Homes here run the furnace September through May, so ducts moving that much air for most of the year are worth having a contractor look at on a regular basis.
- Is air duct cleaning worth it?
- It depends on what's going on in your ducts. If you can see dust building up at the vents, if a register blows out a visible puff when the system kicks on, or if pests or water have gotten into the ductwork, cleaning solves a real problem. If the ducts are new or were cleaned recently and nothing has changed, there's nothing to gain by doing it again on a whim.
- What does air duct cleaning involve?
- A contractor uses brushes and a high-powered vacuum to loosen and pull dust and debris out of the duct system, working through each supply and return line. The registers and grilles get cleaned too, along with the furnace's blower compartment where a lot of that debris collects. Once it's done, the air moving through the system isn't carrying that buildup back into the rooms.