Air Duct Cleaning in Mountain View, CA

Those two decisions are usually separate. If the air handler still runs well and the ducts are intact, cleaning is the cheaper and less disruptive path. It's often the only thing that's ever been neglected. Replacement makes more sense when the retrofit runs are crushed, disconnected at the boots, or so undersized for the closet that airflow was never right to begin with. On a flat-roof Eichler there's no attic to re-route through, so a replacement means rebuilding inside the same shallow plenum space you already have. We look at the existing runs first and tell you plainly which situation you're in, rather than selling a system you may not need.

Three things come up again and again. First, tight routing: flat-roof houses push ducts through shallow plenums and closet chases, so a single sharp bend or a partly collapsed flex run chokes a whole branch, and people assume the system is just weak. Second, construction dust. With redevelopment going on across much of the city, fine grit works into returns and settles on blower wheels, and that gets dragged through the house every cycle. Third, street tree pollen in spring, which coats filters fast and then loads the duct interior once the filter is past its useful life. In the newer apartments and townhomes along El Camino and North Bayshore, the issue is more often leftover drywall dust from construction than years of accumulation.