Air duct cleaning for houses that run the AC year-round

South Florida asks more of a duct system than almost anywhere else. The AC runs nearly continuously, the air it moves is humid, and the ducts in most homes here run through an attic that gets very hot. That combination — moisture plus dust plus warmth — is why duct cleaning matters more here than it does in a dry climate, and why "it's just dust" isn't the whole story.

How it's actually done

A proper duct cleaning puts the entire system under negative pressure with a high-volume vacuum, then agitates each run with brushes or compressed air so the debris has nowhere to go but into the collection unit. Every supply and return gets done. If someone quotes you a whole house for $99 and is out in forty minutes, what they've done is vacuum the first few feet behind the registers.

What we look for while we're in there

• Moisture and microbial growth — the one that matters here. If we find it, cleaning alone isn't the answer and we'll say so; it usually points at a humidity or condensation problem that needs fixing first.
• Disconnected or crushed flex duct — extremely common in attics, and a direct cause of a room that never cools properly.
• Construction debris — drywall dust from a renovation, which keeps shedding into the air for years.
• Rodent or insect evidence — needs dealing with before anything else is worth doing.

When it's worth doing — and when it isn't

Worth doing: after a renovation, after any water event, when you're moving into a house whose history you don't know, when there's visible dust discharge from the registers, or if someone in the house has worsening allergies with no other explanation. Not worth doing: annually, as a routine. Ducts aren't carpets. A typical home needs this every three to five years, and anyone selling you a yearly plan is selling you a subscription, not a service.

Dryer vents

Different job, same visit if you want it, and genuinely a fire-safety issue rather than an air-quality one. More on dryer vent cleaning.