Duct cleaning eliminates dust and other pollutants to ensure indoor air quality. In addition, it may improve the efficiency of your HVAC system and its general performance. It would be best to clean the ducts every 3-5 years.
The average cost of duct cleaning differs from one professional duct cleaner to another. Several factors might affect the price of the duct cleaning process. An average duct cleaning job in Vaughan, Ontario will cost between $350 and $650.
Suppose you notice abnormal dust amounts in your house, rodents around your ductwork, or even mould in or around the heating system. In that case, you’ll have to contact HVAC expert cleaners to perform the duct cleaning process for your AC.
Reasons to Clean Your Ductwork
- If you notice insects, pests, or rodents inside your ductwork
- Excessive debris and dust accumulation in your ducts and around the house
- If you might have performed construction repairs or renovations recently
- If you detect mould growth in the air ducts and around the furnace.
Factors Influencing Duct Cleaning Costs
Presence of rodents
If you notice rodents hanging around your ductwork, they probably have their home somewhere closer than you think. If rodents infest your furnace’s ducts, you’ll have to incur extermination and duct cleaning costs to get rid of these creepy crawlers.
Generally, we all know that rodents can be very destructive. They might leave droppings in your ductwork, thus contaminating distributed air in your house, which might cause more significant problems.
Hiring an exterminator runs up to $600, especially if the task is difficult and time-consuming. Later on, you’re going to call your HVAC cleaners to come and do a thorough cleaning on the vents and ductwork as well.
Custom-designed ducts
Many custom-designed ductwork owners have been raising conflict about the average cost of duct cleaning. Suppose you own custom-designed ductwork for your forced air gas furnace. In that case, you might end up paying slightly more compared to other furnace owners.
Maintaining custom-designed ductwork can be relatively expensive due to its specific sizes, which give the technician a hard time cleaning and repairing. Making spare part replacements for custom-designed ducts can be expensive since their parts are tricky to find.
If your ductwork seems complex and challenging to work on, it might require a bigger crew. Difficult ducts mean that the cleaning expenses might end up rising by 30% or even more.
Number of vents
Different duct cleaners will show up at your door with varying cleaning charges since they’re using other pricing criteria. If your cleaner charges you per vent, they will usually go for 20-50$ for a single vent. Some companies might include a flat fee in the total payment.
Therefore, you clearly understand that someone with more air vents will play a more significant cleaning fee compared to someone with one or two air vents in their house.
Mould growth
Mould is another case that will force you to clean your ducts before the cleaning date. If you realize that there’s some mould growing in and around your ductwork, the cost for mould removal from furnaces ranges from six hundred to two thousand US dollars.
However, cleaning your ducts earlier to eliminate mould will save you further cumbersome removal expenses that you might incur if it spreads to the whole furnace.
Vent and ductwork accessibility
As soon as the cleaning team gets to your doorstep, they will probably ask you about your crawl spaces and your central heating and cooling system access points. If your central AC unit is difficult to access, you’re, of course, going to pay more cash for the extra commitment and work. As a result of this, you’ll negotiate and bargain with the cleaners to conclude a final payment.
Benefits of Duct Cleaning
While some debate how often to clean the ducts, there is no debate on the importance of duct cleaning. We recommended that you clean your ductwork regularly to ensure the indoor air quality is maintained and the efficiency of the HVAC system improved. Moreover, let’s go through the various ductwork cleaning benefits for a homeowner:
- Minimize allergy and respiratory diseases symptoms
- Increase the efficiency of your heating system
- Improve indoor air quality
- Eliminate odours from your home
- Remove hazardous impurities like mould or rodent droppings
- Possibly lengthen its lifespan
You can perform duct cleaning yourself without having to contact the HVAC technician. You’ll have to put your gloves and mask on and complete this DIY task. You’ll have to start with preparing the surroundings then removing the vent covers to access your ductwork.
Use a wipe or brush to brush the dirt and dust off the duct walls before using a vacuum cleaner to suck all the dust out.
If you have long ducts, you’ll have to contact a professional cleaner to help you with the task. Cleaning your air ducts can take a few hours or even a whole day if your ducts need serious cleaning, thus involving much work.
Average Cost of Duct Cleaning – Conclusion
The average cost of duct cleaning will vary from one cleaner to another, considering the factors stated in this article. Depending on the structure of your ductwork and the amount of attention needed, sometimes you’ll have to negotiate and bargain with your cleaner to achieve an affordable price.
You can try cleaning the ducts yourself if your furnace has a simple structure and accessibility. If it’s a complex one, you’ll have to call professional cleaners to perform the task efficiently.
