Air duct cleaning is actually a misnomer.
The air ducts are only one part of the AC system that the air you breathe passes through. The air from your rooms is drawn into the AC system, passes through the blower fan, is drawn across the cooling coils, and only then is forced out through the duct system and back into the rooms.
To improve air quality, complete HVAC system (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) cleaning is required, especially in a humid climate like we have here in Houston Texas.
Why waste money just cleaning the air ducts when the air will still be passing through the dirt, debris, and microbial growth on the coils, blower fan and other parts of the system?
Clean air ducts aid AC system efficiency
Cleaner air is only one benefit of so-called "air duct cleaning." An important benefit of a clean AC system (especially with the high price of electricity today) is that it improves the energy efficiency of your system. The biggest area of concern is the cooling, or evaporator, coils. These are the coils that you don't see, the ones that are up in the attic or wherever the main part of your AC system happens to be. The coils you see outside your house, the condenser coils, are different. The air in your house never passes over these coils.
It's called a split system and works like this. The air in your house is drawn into the AC system and passes over the evaporator coils which have cold refrigerant flowing through them. The air is cooled as it passes over the cold coils, and the excess moisture in the air condenses on the coils much like the moisture in your bathroom condenses on the relatively cold mirror while you are showering. The heat and humidity are removed at the same time, thus "conditioning" the air in your home.
And what about the big unit outside? Well, the heat is absorbed by the refrigerant in the coils and flows through tubing to your outside unit, the condenser. Here the refrigerant is "condensed" by a pump and the heat is, in a sense, squeezed out of the refrigerant and blown into the atmosphere by a large fan. When you hear that fan running on the condenser unit, if you put your hand over the unit, you can feel the heat that was removed from inside your home being blown away.
But why then are the evaporator (inside) coils so important for energy efficiency? The evaporator coils can be several rows deep. As we saw, when the hot humid air passes over the cold coils the moisture is constantly condensing on these coils. The moisture on the coils makes them a perfect medium for picking up the dirt and debris in the air. The moisture and soil on the coils and in the condensate pan, where the water flows to, also provides a perfect condition for microbial growth. As the dirt and debris build up on the several rows of coils, two things happen.
First, the area between the tubing gets clogged with debris and the there is less space for the air to pass through. Your AC has to run longer to get the same amount of air to the cooling coils as it did when they were clean.
Second, the air passing over the coils is now actually coming in contact with the built up dirt, not the coils themselves. Less heat and moisture are being removed from the air because the dirt is actually preventing the air from coming in contact with the "cold" coils. So now your AC has to run even longer, since the air that is getting through the coils isn't being cooled or dehumidified nearly as quickly as it would be coming in contact with clean coils. Your system has to run longer and harder to cool your house, wasting energy and putting additional wear and tear on your AC system.
Don't waste money on incomplete duct cleaning.
So you can see that, especially in humid climates like we have in Houston, air duct cleaning without coil cleaning is not enough to reduce your energy usage and improve your air quality. The amount of moisture condensing on the evaporator coils in our climate makes coil cleaning imperative. Complete HVAC system cleaning is the only way to go if you are considering air duct cleaning. In our opinion, anything less is a waste of money.
David A. Selter is the President of DRYMORE Company in Houston, Texas, with decades of experience in air duct and HVAC system cleaning services in the Gulf Coast area.
DRYMORE is an A+ BBB rated company with experience that includes air duct cleaning, complete HVAC system cleaning, as well as water damage cleanup and repair, and storm preparation services.
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