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The decision has been made, you are having your air ducts professionally cleaned. The only thing left now is to select the right company for the job. In Portland there are three different types of companies from which you can choose. Here is a look at your three options:

Option 1 - HVAC Companies

These guys specialize in everything heating and cooling including the installation of furnaces, boilers, A/C units and the latest geothermal gear. The life-line of their business is not air duct cleaning but the sales and installation of new equipment. As a result their cleaning service is often part of a larger sales pitch. Many Portland HVAC companies are able to offer substantial savings on the equipment they sell by taking advantage of dealer discounts. However, there is no dealer to discount air duct cleaning so their pricing is typically higher than the competition.

Option 2 - Air Duct Cleaning Specialists

The heart and soul of their business is air ducts. You will find a range from one man operations to mid-sized companies with 15-20 technicians on staff. You will generally receive a better experience with an air ducts specialist as the survival of their business depends on it. However, the larger the business gets the less control of quality they have over their technician. You are looking for a company with 4-5 employees and a commitment to personal service. It just makes sense to work with a small to medium sized company with a laser beam focus on air duct cleaning alone.

Option 3 - $99 Whole House Special Companies

Good Heavens, do not choose option number three. This is equivalent to a donkey behind door number one when the convertible is behind door number two. These are largely out of state companies who saturate the Portland market with flyers exclaiming this incredible special. The special does not exist and you end up with an aggressive sales person pitching the price of full package at your dinner table. Once the market has been fully saturated they pull their advertising and move to the next market with no concern of their reputation. After all, as P.T. Barnum said "There's a sucker born every minute."

Are You Looking for More Info On Duct Cleaning Portland? You can find information on several duct cleaning related topics by visiting our website all about Duct Cleaning Portland.

Do Home Air Ducts Really Need to Be Cleaned

All year long I'm swamped with junk mail advertising those services that come into your home and actually vacuum out all the accumulated dust and debris (and even mold) that builds up the metal ducts of any sort of forced air heating or air conditioner system. These companies usually pull up to your house in vans that have tremendous vacuum cleaning units in them. They often run large hoses (more like giant tubes) into a home and basically suck out all the dust and debris from the vents of a home. Some actually scrub the insides of the ducts, to get out any mold or solid debris stuck inside the ducts.

These services aren't cheap and usually cost a few hundred dollars up to a few thousand dollars based on the size of your home and the different levels of cleaning service you choose.

If you know your ducts are dirty you can unscrew the air intake vents from the wall and clean a little bit of the ducts yourself. You can use a home vacuum to suck out anything you can see or reach, but just sucking the dust from the 1% of the actual ductwork you can get to doesn't really make me feel too confident about the cleanliness of the 99% you can't get to.

Sellers of duct cleaning services argue that all the dust and debris is being blown into your home and into your lungs every day. Some other people don't agree with that and claim that most of that dust in your ducts is in your home anyway (how else would it get into your air ducts) and you really don't breathe it in because, hey, the dust is in the vents and clearly not blowing around too much. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published some documents on the idea of cleaning your air ducts and they're fairly interesting. They note that no studies have actually shown definitively that cleaning your air ducts makes the air in your home any cleaner.

So should you have your air ducts cleaned? Here's a quick run down of when you should and should not bother cleaning your air ducts.

You DO want to consider having your air ducts cleaned if you have any of the following:

Clean your ducts if you have any sort of respiratory or lung disease which can be agitated by dust or tiny airborne particles. You should probably stay out of your home for a day or so after cleaning and you should definitely get your ducts tested by a professional lab. Some duct cleaning companies can help you with this scientific testing.

Clean your ducts if you have had any sort of major or minor construction in your home involving dust, fiberglass or other airborne particles that could have been sucked into the duct system and blown out into the air at a later date. Many contractors will purposely seal the air intake vents in a house if they are working with something extremely dusty.

Clean your ducts if you have any sort of visible mold growth or any sort of positive testing for mold in the air ducts. Professionals can run air tests, or you can get a kit to collect a sample and send it to a lab.

Clean your ducts if you know you have some sort of blockage (full or partial) in your air ducts due to debris.

Clean your ducts if you have seen any sort of evidence of animal activity (droppings, nesting) in your air ducts.

If you don't have any of those problems, then you can probably skip the expensive professional air duct cleaning and simple do a little vacuuming inside the returns yourself. Before you do anything you might want to have your duct system inspected and tuned up by a heating and cooling professional every couple of years just to make sure everything is still working as it should and you can catch any small problems before they get bigger.

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what technical questions to ask the salesman before giving a house air duct cleaning job?

air duct in the house was not cleaned for >10 years, each salesman says his job is the best in the market, what should i ask them about any particulars - that helps me to assess that i am getting the job done efficiently by the person.

First of all, be sure to be there when they do the job! We had our ducts cleaned and got robbed by one of the workers who thought we wouldn't miss a few "minor" personal items. But, even though they didn't believe us at first, we reported it to the police and the company and he got caught!

Secondly, ask if they not only remove the vent covers but clean those too. Ask how they clean them and if they use their own cleaning supplies and take the vent covers outside to clean--not in your bathroom or kitchen sinks, using your personal towels. Ask if they clean up the lint that falls into the room with a vacuum cleaner.

They should have a crew of at least two people to put the hose in and clean out the vents and one to clean the vent covers and the area around the vents where the lint falls.

They should clean the air intake vents and cover also. Some try to sell you on cleaning out your actual AC/HVAC unit coils. I don't see the need for that, but if they insists it is needed, get them to show you the dirt in there that they will be cleaning out. If they can't show you, chances are they will not be able to get in there to clean it.

They should change the air filter, but be sure they don't try to sell you some heavy-duty, life-time guarantee filter that supposedly never needs to be replaced. Those don't let enough air flow through. The medium grade ones changed every few months or so work the best. You can buy those at a home improvement store and change them out yourself during the year.

Make sure that they don't damage your walls with their big machine, trying to get it down the hall and around corners. They damaged our walls, too and we had to have them plaster and paint it again.

Just because the company has a nationally recognizeable name doesn't mean they will do the best job. Often these are owners who hire flunkies to do the work who are thieves and don't care. It would be better to get a local guy that has been doing it a long time and can furnish you with references of satisfied customers.

Duct-Cleaning Company Accused Of Consumer Fraud
Investigators call it a bait and switch. A company promises a service for cheap, then uses scare tactics to milk you for much more. Now the Cook County State's Attorney's office wants to shut an "air duct cleaning company" down. CBS 2 Investigator Pam Zekman first exposed the apparent scam.

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