The phrase “out of sight, out of mind,” can be applied very well to your home’s ductwork because it is often forgotten about. However, your ductwork is the delivery system for all your cool air, so making sure it is clean is one of the best ways to keep it effective. It’s recommended that you clean your ductwork every 3-5 years, so if it’s been this long or longer since your last cleaning, give the experts at Comfort Flow Heating a call today.
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Archive for the ‘Duct Cleaning’ Category
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Monday, June 15th, 2015How Duct Sealing Can Save You Money
Wednesday, March 25th, 2015Ductwork is one of the most important, and most neglected, parts of you HVAC system. You home’s ducts are responsible for making centralized forced air heating and cooling possible in the first place. Despite their importance, however, ducts are often completely ignored when it comes to required maintenance. This is unfortunate, as keeping your ducts in good condition can actually save you quite a bit of money on your heating and electric bills. Want to know how? Read on to find out.
Common Duct Issues
Ducts have a couple of different issues with which they’re commonly afflicted. Dust, debris, moisture, and rust are all issues that affect the quality of your ducts. The biggest issue by far, however, is duct leaks. Ducts are actually quite vulnerable to leaks, despite their relatively passive role in heating and air conditioning. Improper installation often leaves gaps between the different sections of ductwork. Moisture or animal activity can create small holes through which air can escape. Even expanding and contracting from regular use can result in sections of the ductwork working themselves loose.
So, what’s the big deal? A few small leaks here and there hardly constitute an emergency, right? Actually, the US Department of Energy has estimated that the average forced air system loses as much as 30% of its output to duct leaks. That’s almost a third of your heating and air conditioning output that you’re still paying for, but which is lost before it ever reaches its destination. That loss forces your systems to stay on longer to accomplish the same temperatures, which contributes to a significant rise in your heating and electric bills.
How Duct Sealing can Help
Duct sealing is the process of finding and closing any leaks that may be present in your ductwork. By having an experienced professional seal your ducts for you, you’re drastically improving the efficiency of your heater and air conditioner. This is how you can substantially lower your heating and electric bills. If you haven’t had your ducts sealed in the past year or two, call Comfort Flow Heating. We provide duct sealing services throughout Salem, OR.
How Often Should I Schedule Duct Cleaning?
Wednesday, March 11th, 2015Ducts are among the most unobtrusive parts of any HVAC system. They are simple, often quiet, and tend not to suffer the dramatic breakdowns common to the more main parts of heating and air conditioning systems. That being said, your ducts still serve a vital purpose. If not taken care of properly they can not only negatively affect your HVAC systems, but your own health as well. Let’s have a look at why duct cleaning is so important, and how often you should have it done.
Why Bother With Duct Cleaning?
Floating through the air you breathe, right this second, are millions upon millions of microscopic particles. Some of these particles are harmless. Some are lung irritants, like dust and pollen. If you’re an allergy sufferer, these can make your life pretty hellish in high amounts. Some are even infectious agents like viruses, bacteria, and mold spores. These are the worst, able to sicken those they infect and lowering their quality of life.
With all of these things present in every breath you take, you may wonder why you’re not sneezing and coughing constantly. The reason you’re not constantly sick or having allergy attacks is that the concentration of these particles is often pretty low. In most homes, while these contaminants are present, they often don’t have the numbers to really impact your immune system in a noticeable way. There is one big exception to this, however, and it has to do with your ducts.
Airborne contaminants have a tendency to collect in the ducts in your home, mainly because it’s dark and out of the way of most human activity. This makes it easy for these pollutants to settle down and thrive, away from any normal cleaning efforts you may attempt. Then, when you turn on your heater or air conditioner, all of those contaminants get blown around your house at once. This gives you a much higher dose of these contaminants than normal, increasing the chances of a severe reaction.
The Benefits of Duct Cleaning
Duct cleaning is used to remove this massive buildup of contaminants from your ducts, increasing your air quality and possibly improving your health. Though the buildup of contaminants in your ducts can be quite significant, it tends to happen slowly. For that reason, you shouldn’t need to have your ducts cleaned more than once every one or two years. The biggest danger is not having them cleaned at all. If you haven’t had your ducts cleaned in the past couple of years, call Comfort Flow Heating to schedule duct cleaning service with us in Salem, OR.
How Duct Cleaning Improves Your Indoor Air Quality
Wednesday, February 25th, 2015When was the last time that you spared a thought for the ducts in your home? Probably not for a while, and no one can blame you for that. After all, what is there to really consider about ducts? They are an avenue for air to travel through, and that’s about it. Now, when was the last time you worried about the quality of the air in your home? Probably quite a bit more recently. People worry about dust and dander a lot more often, because they have a lot more apparent (and harmful) effects on the occupants of the home. What a lot of people don’t know, however, is that there is a strong link between the home’s ducts and the pollutants that lower the home’s air quality. Let’s take a look at how duct cleaning can vastly improve your air quality.
The Ideal Environment
As you already know, the air in the average home is full of all sorts of airborne contaminants. These range from dust and dander to viruses and bacteria. While a lot of these contaminants have limited harmful effects, they can have a major impact on the health of allergy sufferers and those with weakened immune systems. While most people counteract these contaminants by dusting and keeping the house clean, there is one place that is often neglected: the ducts.
Ducts are not only spared cleaning efforts and other human activity, but they are also dark. This makes them the ideal environment for biological pollutants to spread, many of which can be killed by too much exposure to UV light. When a heating or air conditioning system is turned on, all these new pollutants are then blown out of the ducts and into the home, where they can begin infecting people.
Duct Cleaning as a Solution
Duct cleaning counteracts this vicious cycle by periodically removing the buildup of contaminants in your ducts. This both prevents the ducts from distributing contaminants around your house, and removes a lot of the extant ones from your air. Essentially, your ducts become a trap, collecting the majority of the airborne pollutants for removal by your HVAC technician.
If you haven’t had your ducts cleaned in a while, call Comfort Flow heating. We provide duct cleaning services throughout the Florence area.
How Duct Repair Can Save You Money on Your Heating Bill
Monday, February 16th, 2015There are several types of heating systems available to homeowners today, including ductless heat pumps and radiant heating systems. Radiant heating systems use a boiler to heat water and move it to the various rooms of the house. A ductless heat pump operates much like an air conditioning system, with a refrigerant line, compressor, coils, and blower fans that help to move heat from one area to another, except that it can also move in reverse, carrying heat from the outdoor air to the inside of the house. The indoor unit mounts onto the wall, eliminating the need for ducts.
Despite all of these options, the most common types of heating systems use the ducts to deliver warm air into the home. In some cases, homeowners have ducted heat pumps for efficient heating and air conditioning. But far more often, homes are equipped with furnaces, which run either via electricity, heating oil, or a natural gas line. This is the most common heating system in the United States, mostly because it tends to be reliable, safe, and long-lasting—as long as you schedule regular maintenance.
If your well-maintained heating system runs into trouble, it may be because of the duct system. Unfortunately, ducts are prone to leaks. And when the ducts have leaks, your home won’t get enough warm air, which means it will take longer to raise the temperature. Your heater could struggle as a result, and some parts may begin to break down as they become overworked.
When a heating system begins to fail, many technicians tend to repair the broken parts and overlook the duct system as a possible source of the issue. But the ducts should be routinely inspected in order to make sure you don’t run into any heating issues because of them. Leaks in the ducts also force you to spend a lot more money on your heating bills as your heating system takes a lot longer to condition your home.
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the typical home heating and cooling system wastes about thirty percent of the energy it uses in the duct system. If you at all suspect that you need duct repair service for your home, or if it’s just been a while since anyone has checked out your system, call the friendly professionals at Comfort Flow Heating in Salem today.
How Does Duct Cleaning Help Heating?
Friday, January 23rd, 2015Duct cleaning is one of the more important kinds of maintenance you can conduct on your heating system. Sadly, it is also one of the most ignored among homeowners. This is often because homeowners are simply unaware of how important duct cleaning is, not only for the health of your heating system but for your own health as well. Let’s examine the ways that duct cleaning helps your heating system, and provides a few benefits that you don’t want to miss.
The Necessity of Duct Cleaning
Ducts are naturally unobtrusive, designed to do their jobs quietly and stay out of sight as much as possible. This is a good thing in many ways. You don’t want giant sheet metal eyesores lining your walls, after all. However, this also means that they often get completely ignored regarding maintenance. Though it may seem like your ducts don’t need any sort of special attention to keep operating, they actually need duct cleaning in order to have a long and productive life.
As ducts are left undisturbed by the activities of the home’s occupants, they have a tendency to accumulate dust and other microscopic airborne pollutants over time. When the heat is turned on, all of that debris is circulated throughout the house and lowers your air quality. Duct cleaning removes debris and pollutants before they can circulate, improving your health and the health of the ductwork.
Duct cleaning isn’t limited to the ducts, either. Often, an HVAC technician will extend their cleaning efforts to the heater itself, ensuring that no dust is present in the system and that the air filter is clean and functioning. This helps the heater to operate more efficiently, as too much dust in the system can cause problems.
Finally, duct cleaning can save you money. The US Department of Energy has estimated that forced air systems lose as much as 30% of their heat on average to leaks in the ductwork. While duct cleaning does not normally involve sealing leaks, it can identify them so that they can be fixed.
Schedule an appointment with us if you haven’t had your ducts cleaned in a while by calling Comfort Flow Heating. We provide duct cleaning services throughout Cottage Grove.
