Duct Cleaning in Pikeville, KY
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Seven months of heat means seven months of buildup
Your furnace runs October through April here, close to seven months straight. On the cold nights Pikeville gets in December through February, averaging 28°F, it cycles on and off all night long, pulling air through the same ducts over and over. Whatever is sitting in those ducts moves through your house every time the system runs.
Pike County has also seen 125 damaging wind events and 14 winter storms over the past ten years. Storms like that push dust and debris into homes, and outages that follow shut a system down and start it back up again, often with the fan pulling in whatever settled in the ductwork while it sat idle. Over years of that, the buildup lines the ducts and the furnace has to push air through it to heat the house.
- 7 months
- October through April, your furnace pushes air through your ducts
- 4 months
- June through September, your air conditioner does the same
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
- How often should air ducts be cleaned?
- There's no fixed schedule that fits every home. Homes with pets, smokers, or someone with allergies tend to need it sooner, since dust and dander build up faster. Recent construction or water damage is also a reason to check the ducts sooner than you otherwise would. A contractor can look at your system and tell you what makes sense for your house.
- Is air duct cleaning worth it?
- It depends on what's going on in the ducts. If there's visible dust blowing out of vents, a musty smell when the system runs, or debris built up at the register, cleaning them makes sense. Clean ducts also mean the furnace and air conditioner aren't pulling air through a layer of buildup, which matters here since the furnace runs from October through April. If nothing seems wrong and the filter gets changed on schedule, cleaning may not add much.
- What does air duct cleaning involve?
- A contractor uses tools to loosen dust and debris from inside the ductwork, then pulls it out with a high-powered vacuum. This usually covers the supply and return ducts, the grilles and registers, and sometimes the coil and blower if they're accessible. The goal is to get the buildup out of the duct walls, not just what's sitting near the vent opening.