Guide to Air Duct Cleaning Cost Published

Online, May 31, 2011 (Newswire.com) - AirDuctCleaning-Phoenix.com announced the publication of their air duct cleaning cost guide on their website at AirDuctCleaning.com. The guide is designed to help consumers understand what factors impact the cost of air duct cleaning and help them ensure they get their money's worth when they hiring an air duct cleaner.

Air duct cleaning can have a dramatic impact on indoor air quality and for some allergy and asthma suffers it is the only way they can enjoy as normal a life as possible. Unfortunately the air duct cleaning industry has developed a less than perfect reputation and there are many news stories and internet posts about air duct cleaning scams.

About the cost guide, Kevin Johanson, founder of AirDuctCleaning-Phoenix.com, says "We felt that by better educating consumers about what air duct cleaning is and how a legitimate air duct cleaner would price a job we could help consumers avoid getting ripped off".

Many air duct cleaners advertise low prices to either get customers to call or with the intent to upsell customers later. Other air duct cleaners, referred to as "blow and go" contractors, are not using the low prices to generate customer calls or with the intent of upselling later but rather with the intent of giving the customer exactly what they paid for, a quick vacuum of their ducts or registers and that's it.

Referred to as "blow and go", these cleaners typically clean only the duct work portion of the ventilation system in a home but do very little to improve the air quality. The National Air Duct Cleaning Association (NADCA - www.nadca.com) recommends that the entire HVAC system, including the mechanical component of heating and cooling systems, be cleaned at the same time as the duct work. Failure to do so can result in very little improvement in air quality because the portions which were not cleaned can re-contaminate the recently cleaned portions.

Air duct cleaning can help heating and cooling systems run more efficiently but only if the mechanical components are cleaned. Dirty systems, and more specifically the heating and cooling coils, can use 30% more energy to heat and cool a home.

Many factors influence the price of residential air duct cleaning. Contractors advertising either a fixed price for any home or a fixed price per room of a home should be avoided. A contractor cannot properly bid a job without physically inspecting a home's HVAC and air duct system. The size of a home, complexity and design of the duct work (does it have a separate return duct system or a central return duct), what the ducts are made of, condition of the system and accessibility of the ducts and HVAC all impact the price of air duct cleaning.

Both the NADCA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (www.epa.gov) have stated that residential air duct cleaning "typically - but not always - range in cost from $450 to $1,000 per heating and cooling system, depending on the services offered, the size of the system to be cleaned, system accessibility, climatic region, and level of contamination."