The People Behind the Work

Some duct systems cannot be cleaned back to good. We say so on site. If flex duct has torn liner, crushed sections behind a truss, or insulation that has broken down and is shedding into the airstream, running a brush through it moves the problem around instead of fixing it. Same with sheet metal that has rusted through at a seam or sat under a roof leak long enough to hold mold on the fiberglass. We show you the camera footage, explain what cleaning would and would not accomplish, and tell you when replacement or repair is the better spend. We would rather lose the job than take money for work that will not hold.

Most of our calls in Chula Vista come from two housing eras. The 1950s–70s postwar ranch tracts here and in Bonita still run original sheet metal trunk-and-branch, and those systems hold decades of settled dust, drywall grit from remodels, and rodent traffic in the crawlspace. The 1990s–2010s two-story tracts east and south run flex duct through attics that hit 130°F and up, where the liner gets brittle and the elbows sag and collect. Southwestern San Diego County runs a sharp coastal-to-inland climate gradient over just 15–20 miles, so a home a few miles east of here works its system harder from May into October than one near the bay. Rainfall is low and the dry season runs roughly six months, which keeps soil, decomposed granite dust and pollen airborne and pulling through returns continuously. Fall Santa Ana winds push desert dust, chaparral pollen and wildfire smoke across the whole county, and the 2003 and 2007 firestorms left ash in attics and duct systems that people are still finding.

On site we run a truck-mounted vacuum, seal every register so the system holds negative pressure, and work each branch with rotary brushes and air whips back to the trunk and plenum. We pull and clean the return grilles, check the blower compartment, and photograph before and after. We service Carrier, Trane, Lennox, Goodman, Rheem and American Standard equipment. Plenty of times we open a system and find it clean enough to leave alone, and we tell people that too, usually with a recommendation on filter replacement instead. What moves the cost on a duct cleaning here is the number of supply runs, whether the attic or crawlspace is workable or tight, how far gone the return side is, and whether the system needs coil cleaning or duct sealing to make the cleaning worth doing at all. A single-story ranch with eight runs and a clear crawlspace is a different day than a two-story tract home with sixteen runs in a hot attic.