If you see dust on your furniture or experience things like moldy odors, dirty air filters, clogged cooling coils, musty closets, smoky rooms and dirty vents, these are all signs that your ducts need cleaning.
It is also recommended that you improve your air filtration system, and the best time to take care of that is just after your air ducts have been properly cleaned.
Anyone moving into a newly constructed home, who owns a home more than five years old and/or owns a home with children or pets should have their ducts cleaned.
People with allergies should also have their ducts cleaned on a regular basis.
The danger of a dryer duct fire is very real. Check out this video which offers some excellent tips on how to prevent a dryer duct fire from occurring in your home.
Dryer vent cleaning will significantly reduce this fire hazard and will give you peace of mind. It also reduces the amount of time it takes to dry each load, which in turn saves you money on your hydro bill.
If you notice ANY of the following it may be time to schedule a cleaning:
Damper (flappers) on outside exhaust termination barely opens when dryer is on.
Clothes are damp or hotter than usual at the end of the cycle.
Laundry room feels warmer or more humid than normal.
Clothes take an unusually long time to dry.
Outside of dryer is unusually hot.
It has been over a year since you had your dryer vent cleaned.
Most people clean their air ducts to improve the quality of air in their home. Not a bad idea at all if you ask me as an air duct cleaning business owner and overall lover of clean air. What many people do not know is that you can improve your energy efficiency as part of the process. All you need to do is choose the right company and they should assist you in this process. Here are a few ways the right duct cleaning company can help.
When your technician is making his way around your home during the duct cleaning process he can spot all sorts of things that will help you and your energy usage. The first is what is called a boot connection seal. This is where your ductwork meets the floor register. Around each of those connections is typically a small gap. Sometimes the gap is as small as an eighth of an inch. Keep in mind that even if it is that small and it is at every register you will eventually end up with something equivalent to a several inch gap in your system. Not only does that reduce the energy efficiency of your system but it also pulls in large amounts of dust outside the living space of your home. The best thing your cleaning company can do is seal these gaps with a caulk or expanding foam product. Duct tape works well, too. You will love the difference.
The other energy savings comes at the spot of your filter. This time we’re not talking about gaps but the quality of your filter. If you have a lesser quality filter that tends to clog sooner rather than later it might be a good idea to make a change. The reason for this is not to have just another thing to sell you but it just makes sense. For starters when your system’s filtration is clogged, your system must work harder and longer to get the air to where it needs to go. This will shorten the life of your furnace as well as increase your energy bill. You can still use the cheap filters if you like but just make sure they are changed on a regular basis. No one likes a clogged filter, especially your furnace.
Your air duct cleaning company should be able to help you with both of these potential energy hogs. If they are not able to help then you probably chose the wrong company. If that is the case you can make these suggestions to your service provider or even handle the work yourself.
Since our inception, City Duct Cleaning has been very much involved in the restoration of fire and flood damage in homes and businesses in the Greater Toronto Area.
The air vents and diffusers in the photos below look like regular dirty vents that you’d see almost everywhere. But these particular ones came from a duct system that was serving an office area that had a recent bad fire.
These vents smelled very bad because of the smoke, and in fact, they were so sooty that we choose to gather them up and bring them back to our office to clean them, rather than doing it on site.
The back of the diffusers were completely smoke damaged, and so were the grills. But we cleaned, disinfected them and shined them up so perfectly that the customer thought we were brining back new ones instead of the ones he originally had.
Judging from the amount of soot that we found on these air vents, you can imagine the state of the air duct systems and the HVAC units, which were thoroughly sooted out. We cleaned that all up like new too, but that’s our specialty. We love doing this kind of cleaning.
If you ever have the misfortune to experience a fire or flood damage in your home or place of business, you can request City Duct Cleaning Inc. to take care of your air handling systems if you are in the Greater Toronto Area. The entire cost of our service is something that your insurance company will pay for completely, as air duct cleaning is a normal procedure in the remedial of fire and flood damage claims.
Did you know that birds will go to almost any length to build a nest where every home owner doesn’t want them to? They will build in your dryer exhaust, your kitchen exhaust, your washroom exhaust and in any type of exterior air duct ventilation you may have.
We have the right ladders, air hoses, air duct tools to safely remove the nest. Don’t try it yourself, give City Duct Cleaning a call.
What you can’t see, can definitely hurt you.
This is a typical washroom exhaust duct, which
has not been duct cleaned for years.
The air won’t exhaust properly, causing the washroom
to smell and the duct motor, duct housing and
duct exhaust run will get clogged!!!
If you want to save money and have your
exhaust ducts work efficiently, call City Duct Cleaning
for a professional cleaning.
Pet Urine is difficult to locate in any home, even though it is very easy to smell. Pet urine can be removed out of your duct work. To determine where your pet has urinated, provide yourself with a UV black light. Make sure you turn all the lights off on that floor, so that you can be sure to see the glow.
Once you detect the area(s) where the pet has urinated, you must clean that area in its entirety. Most times animals will go to the bathroom on carpet or hardwood floors, which can be located close to your duct system. Once an animal has urinated in one spot then it is very instinctive that they keep re-soiling that specific area.
To remove the odor, it is highly NOT-RECOMMENDED to use any products that are ammonia based. As you know, if you have this problem, most urine has ammonia in it, which does not effectively clean the soiled area, and will keep the animal still interested to keep re-soiling this spot. We do recommend the use of baking soda with white vinegar. Please always do a test spot first to ensure that it does not create more damage, by discoloring your carpets or hardwood floors. Make sure that these products do not enter your heating and cooling system. If any of the products do enter the duct system, you should open all the windows and doors and call us.
Once the surrounding areas around the vents are cleaned, you will need to hire a professional duct cleaner. Dust, debris, crevices, or cracks can hold in the pet urine odor. Once your system is running it will distribute this awful smell throughout the home. At City Duct Cleaning we have the proper chemicals that can remove the urine smell from inside the ductwork, without contaminating the rest of your system.
In Toronto where the weather is unusually hot this year, your air conditioner is very important. City Duct Cleaning offers a variety in Air Conditioning solutions in the GTA area. All of our work is guaranteed.
The HVAC equipment and tools that we use are the highest standard in our industry, to be able to manage any task small to large. All of our technicians are trained and certified in the duct cleaning field. Please contact us for a free estimate… 416-293-1800.
Did you know that dryer fires are the most common fire in Ontario? This is because most homeowners don’t realize the amount of lint that comes off of their clothes with every cycle. When you dry your clothes most of the lint is trapped in your lint trap. The rest of the lint builds up on the inside of your dryer piping. With this lint collection and the gas that your dryer puts out (even if electric), plus the temperature of your dryer, heats this lint up and dries it out. Now this extremely dry lint is in the line of the gas from the exhaust, which in turn can catch it on fire.
Also with dryers that have long connections this lint can build up so much over time that it actually clogs the ventilation kit to the outside of your home.
If this goes undetected, and the clog has time to keep catching more and more lint, the exhaust line will be so plugged that even the moisture from the dryer will also collect in the lines.
When there is water / condensation in a dryer line, this can create unnecessary replacement of the exhaust line itself.
Even though dryer vents are routinely blocked with lint, birds and squirrels also like to provide this area for nesting and raising babies, because of the small, dark, dry area which can be a frequent cause of dryer vent blockage and our equipment allows us to remove these blockages as well.
As with anything, if you want something to work efficiently, it must be clean. Your outside air conditioning condenser needs attention just like the interior air duct system does. For a quick simple solution….and a way NOT TO SPEND MONEY…get the garden hose and occasionally wash off the dirt, grass clippings, etc. from the outside unit. Because when it builds up with dirt and debris, the efficiency is not there.
In Toronto where the weather is unusually hot this year, your air conditioner is very important. 
