If You’re Dusting Your Furniture Daily, It Might Be Time For A Duct Cleaning Service | Azle, TX
Photo By energyy at istock
One important way you might notice that your indoor air quality is not what it could be is the amount of dust you find around the house. There are other factors that affect your breathing and comfort, but dust is visible and it can build up quickly on your furniture and other surfaces. It travels when your HVAC system is actively distributing it instead of keeping it out of your warm or cool air, both from poor filtration and from settling in your ducts and waiting for its next trip around your home thanks to your comfort system. That’s why we at One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating of Fort Worth recommend to our customers in Azle, TX, and all the other cities and towns we serve, a regular duct cleaning service, at least every couple of years.
It’s amazing how much dust, pollen, and other allergens, dirt, and organic material winds up settling and accumulating in your duct system, so much that over the years it can actually significantly narrow the space your air blows through, reducing the effectiveness of your heating and cooling and looking pretty nasty when someone finally opens up your ducts to take a look. Duct cleaning service in Azle, TX is straightforward, effective, keeps the dust and dirt either in the duct or in our equipment and not on your floors and furniture, and leaves your duct interiors clean and smooth, with no material to blow around, and plenty of space for your system to use to warm and cool your home. Plus, you’ll have a lot less dusting to do once your ducts are clean.
Duct Cleaning as Periodic Maintenance
Every couple of years, having our team go in and clean your duct systems resets them to a nice, smooth interior that is less likely to gather more material and also won’t affect your airflow like turbulence-inducing material lining duct walls can. Most of all, with all the allergens, dust, and other material removed, your air quality is much higher than if the material inside your ducts keeps breaking loose and blowing out your vents to land on your furniture and get breathed into your lungs.
Duct Cleaning as a Deep One-Time Cleaning
If you haven’t had duct cleaning service in a long time, or perhaps bought your home without knowing the state of the ducts, you could be in for a big surprise when our team cleans them out. Thick layers of accumulated material can turn into a felt-like lining for your ducts, narrowing the passageway for your HVAC system’s air circulation and providing a large amount of material to combine with the airflow and travel as irritants, allergens, and infectious agents throughout your house. Once you’ve had a major deep cleaning duct cleaning service, every couple of years a maintenance repeat service will keep your heating and cooling system delivering better air quality.
Materials That Gather in Ducts
Anything that can get airborne can wind up in your ducts, from pollen and dust to tiny mites and flecks of skin. Organic material gathering in your ducts can host the growth of bacteria and other pathogens, and large pieces of material like hair can gather to build up in your ducts and trap even more materials until the lining they form is significant in thickness. Our duct cleaning service provides a clean sweep of all of it.
Effects of Dirty Ducts
You can simulate the effect of warm and cool air traveling through your ducts by blowing on the top of a table. If you’ve recently cleaned the surface, nothing notable will happen. If, however, you haven’t dusted or cleaned in a while, anything on the surface that the air can lift, it will, and the air will be full of dust and other particles floating around to land elsewhere or be breathed in by your family. If you place a piece of food on the table that has grown mold, don’t try blowing on it because you will disperse mold particles all over with just your breath. Imagine mold and bacteria growing in your ducts on organic material up there, and you’ll begin to realize how important it is to have clean ducts for your HVAC system to operate through. Each one of the 18,000 to 20,000 breaths per day you typically breathe on average, you’ll benefit from having a regular duct cleaning service.
Checking Ducts for Leaks and Damage
Ducts can stay in place for decades with just regular duct cleaning service to maintain them. While our team is performing those duct cleaning services, we’ll also take a look at your ducts and make sure they’re still in good shape, especially the seals between sections of duct material. If there’s any damage, your ventilation system will be affected, both reducing or disturbing your airflow and also possibly pulling in air from near any leaks, including contaminants floating in that air. For example, the ducts traveling through your basement might pull in lint when you’re cleaning your dryer or wood dust from your workshop.
Blocked Vents and System Imbalance
Our duct cleaning service may note if you have blocked vents that are restricting the flow of air into a room or a part of a room, and creating areas of warmer and cooler air that can be uncomfortable for people in the room. Blocked vents also change the internal pressure of your vents, forcing more pressure through nearby vents and unbalancing your airflow, with other unbalanced effects on your home’s air temperature. Your thermostat won’t be able to adjust these, as it only senses local temperature.
Working Your Ventilation System Too Hard
Our HVAC experts can determine if your circulation fans are sufficient to supply the airflow you need throughout your house. If not, your system may be working too hard to reach the end of your duct lines, if the thermostat is located there, or producing insufficient airflow otherwise. Reduced airflow can increase the need for duct cleaning service since more dust and other materials will settle on your duct walls.
Changing Your System’s Air Filter
Your heating and cooling system depends on good airflow, which is one reason for our duct cleaning service and also why replacing your system’s basic air filter is so important. A clogged air filter can actually cause your system to malfunction, reducing airflow and causing side effects such as icing in your air conditioning unit. It’s an easy task to forget and postpone, but on many of our HVAC service calls, a seriously clogged air filter is part of the problem. While duct cleaning service is only performed every couple of years in most cases, air filter replacement is on an as-needed basis, often as frequently as once per month.
Humidity Control
Humidity in your Azle, TX home’s air and static electricity produced when your air is not very humid are both factors causing the material to cling to the sides of your ducts. They’re also important for your comfort, of course, and many homeowners have humidifier and dehumidifier units installed on their HVAC system to keep the air comfort just right year-round. A thermostat that senses humidity controls the balance, and puts to work whichever unit is needed for the right level of moisture in the air. It’s true that air conditioning equipment extracts moisture from the air as part of its normal operation, which can reduce the humidity level in the air. Depending on the capacity of the condenser unit, however, the level of dehumidification can be too much or too little to reach the moisture level you set on your thermostat. Too much AC power cools your home quickly, but dries it out quickly as well, for instance.
HEPA Filter
If you’re concerned about indoor air, especially because someone in your home is sensitive to allergens and other airborne particles, chances are you’ve purchased at least one portable HEPA filter and probably several. These are small air circulators with an extremely fine air filter that pulls nearly every particle from the air of any significant size at all. Rather than use all those portable units and purchase replacement filters for each type, you can have a single HEPA filter unit installed on your home’s HVAC system so all of your home’s circulating air is processed and filtered. When you have your duct cleaning service, you’ll notice the reduced quantity of material that has been allowed to settle over the time since your last cleaning, as an indication of the effects of this excellent filter method.
UV Light
If you have portable HEPA filters, you may notice newer models sometimes include a bluish UV light for additional air quality improvement. These UV lights have long been used in areas where contamination by pathogens like bacteria is a concern, such as medical clinics and restaurants. Your home HVAC system can have a UV light that processes air flowing through the ducts, adding to the reduced risk of pathogens that our duct cleaning service for Azle, TX offers with daily care for your air.
Thermostats
Your thermostat tells your HVAC system to blow air through the ducts until it senses that the air nearby is at the right temperature. If you have a smart thermostat or intelligent thermostat, you have more options for adjusting your whole-house heating or cooling to match your needs, especially between daytime and at night. Smart home thermostats integrate your HVAC system with other parts of your smart home system such as smart window shades or a home weather station, adjusting your heating and cooling to anticipate your local weather and its effect on your home’s internal temperature.
Do You Have a Zoned Duct System? If Not, It’s Something to Talk About
When you have your duct system modified to include separate paths to different areas of your home, including a fan and thermostat for each, you can reduce the amount that your heating and air conditioning systems have to work. You have control over which areas of the house get cooled or heated at which times of day, and which areas that aren’t in use don’t have to be actively brought to a specific temperature.
When Your AC System or Furnace Isn’t Running Right, Your Ducts Can Get Even Dirtier
Problems with your air conditioning unit or furnace can introduce material in the air that further increases deposits in your ducts and particles in your distributed airflow. If your systems are not clean and efficient, they may be missing regular maintenance from our professional HVAC team. We not only fine-tune your systems but check the condition of components to reduce the likelihood of failures during peak heating and cooling seasons. By making sure motors, belts, compressors, coils, and other critical parts are in good shape, running smoothly and with limited wear, we can help prevent summer emergency repair visits.
Getting Your Duct Cleaning Service from Our Professional HVAC Company Is a Great Way to Meet Us
There are many ways that new customers find us, from emergency calls where they discover our reliability and 24-hour availability, to planned maintenance visits and repairs to ensure their systems are ready for the next season. Duct cleaning service is also a great way to get to know our team, as you meet our customer service team when you call, and our technicians who take great care with every detail of our services. You’ll also discover how knowledgeable our team is in all aspects of HVAC service, including most brands and types of home heating and cooling equipment.
Efficient, Effective Duct Cleaning Service from Your HVAC Experts in Azle, TX
Along with regular maintenance, duct cleaning service keeps your heating and air conditioning system running at its best. One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating of Fort Worth takes care of all your HVAC comfort system needs in Azle, TX, including duct cleaning service that benefits your dusting and your breathing. Give us a call to schedule yours.