Duct Cleaners = Occupant Health and Money Saved

Allow us, dear readers, to borrow a little from William Shakespeare.  “To clean or not to clean, (your ducts) that is the question.”  Okay, Bill didn’t include the “your ducts” thing, but otherwise, the conundrum is the same – is it really important to clean your air ducts? We here at Just Venting are very attached to duct cleaners so…

The answer is a resounding YES!

The reasons are many and diverse, but they ultimately fall into two general areas: health reasons and financial reasons.

Let’s look at the health-related reasons first:

According to the World Health Organization, one person dies somewhere in the world every 20 seconds because of poor indoor air quality – more than 1.6 million people every year.

Research at Louisiana State University suggests that 500,000 Americans die each year from cardiopulmonary disease because of poor indoor air quality.

The American Lung Association attributes tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year to poor indoor air quality, and thousands – even millions of cases of asthma, infections and other medical conditions.

The financial reasons can be pretty compelling as well.  Anything that restricts the free flow of air through your HVAC system reduces its efficiency.  The less efficient your system, the more energy it takes to generate a given change in temperature.   Restricted airflow also means less air circulates, so it takes longer to change out the air in a given room, further increasing energy costs.

Research has demonstrated that once particles of pollution (dust, mites, bacteria, mold, animal feces, chemicals, etc.) remain in an HVAC system and rise to a certain level, they start being sucked back into the moving air stream.  Not only does this clog up your filters more quickly, it exposes occupants to a greater level of pollution.   If you want to see costs add up quickly, have some of your occupants accuse you of operating a “sick” building.  Can you say lawsuit”?   Sure, I knew that you could.  (Disclaimer:  We at Just Venting are not, nor have we ever been, lawyers.  Accordingly, do not construe anything we say here as actual legal advise or opinion.)

So given that the reasons for keeping your ductwork clean are so compelling it seems to us the question should not be “Should I do it?” but rather “When should I clean them” and/or ” How should I clean them.”

The when is really beyond the scope of this article — that’s a function of a variety of factors, including the age, size and condition of your facility, the kind of building it is, (commercial, residential, restaurant, hospital, etc.) and location of the facility, both in terms of geography and proximity to sources of pollution like highways and factories.

The how, however, we can address.

We think the most efficient and effective way to clean your ducts is with a rotary brush and vacuum system like the Goodway AQR 1500-60.  The rotary brushes – designed for different sizes and kinds of duct cleaning jobs — clean down to the bare duct and the purpose-built vacuum pulls all that displaced pollution out of your ducts for safe and easy disposal.

Use strategically-placed bladders to block off newly-cleaned sections of duct so they stay clean as you finish the rest of your system.

Terms like “sick building syndrome” and “indoor air quality” have only recently entered the lexicon of building managers, but it is a safe bet that they are not only here to stay, but they will be joined by new ones.  Get a head start dealing with them by instituting a regular duct cleaning program.  You – and your building occupants – will be glad you did.

Rich Silverman
Goodway Blogging Team