Duct Cleaning in St. Petersburg, FL
Tell us about your home, and a licensed contractor who covers Pinellas County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Florida air moves through your ducts almost year round
Pinellas County barely gets a winter. Nights average 54°F even in the coolest months, so the air handler spends most of the year on the cooling side, pulling humid Gulf air through the same ducts day after day. That moisture moving through metal and flex duct all year gives dust and mold spores something to stick to, and once that buildup is in the ducts, the system spreads it through the house every time it runs.
More than half the homes in the county are single-family, and most of those are owner-occupied, so it is usually the same duct system for as long as someone owns the place. Storms add to that. The county has logged 60 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and outages that follow them leave ducts sitting warm and still, with no air moving through to keep dust and moisture from settling in.
- 1 months
- January through January, your furnace pushes air through your ducts
- 10 months
- March through December, 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, but a contractor can tell you what your ducts need by looking at them. Homes with pets, a recent renovation, or someone with allergies tend to need it sooner, since dust and dander build up faster and get pulled straight through the system. If you see dust kicking out of the vents when the air comes on, that's a sign to have them looked at rather than wait.
- Is air duct cleaning worth it?
- It's worth it when there's a real reason behind it, like dust coming out of the vents, a musty smell when the air runs, or work done on the ducts recently that left debris behind. It won't lower your power bill or fix a system that's cooling poorly, since ducts carry air and the filter is what cleans it. If nobody in the house has allergy symptoms and the vents look clean, there's less to gain from doing it just to do it.
- What does air duct cleaning involve?
- A contractor connects a vacuum system to the ductwork and uses brushes or air tools to knock loose dust and debris off the interior walls, then pulls it out before it can resettle. The supply and return vents get cleaned too, along with the grilles covering them. On most jobs the coil and blower housing get a look as well, since dust collects there and can travel back into the ducts if it's left alone.