Air Duct Cleaning in San Rafael, CA

Frequently Asked Questions

My house is a 1920s bungalow in Gerstle Park with ducts in the crawlspace. Is that a problem for cleaning?

It's the most common setup we see in older San Rafael, and no, it's workable, it just changes how the job goes. A lot of those homes started with a gravity furnace and got sheet metal retrofitted in later, so the trunk lines run low under the floor with branch takeoffs that were never sealed. We clean from the registers and from access points in the crawl, and we check boots where they land in the floor framing. The thing that slows us down isn't the cleaning, it's the crawl itself: low headroom, dirt, and sometimes standing moisture. If the crawlspace is tight or blocked by storage, tell us ahead of time so we schedule enough hours.

We keep finding droppings near a floor vent. Can you tell if rodents have gotten into the ducts?

Yes, and in crawlspace duct systems around here it's one of the first things we look for. Under-floor trunks in the older housing stock often have loose or fallen boots, open seams at takeoffs, and sagging flex that was added during a kitchen or bath remodel and never properly strapped. That gives rodents a way in. We inspect before we clean, and if there's an active entry or nesting material we'll say so plainly. Cleaning a duct that's still open to the crawl just means you're back in the same spot next year, so the sealing and the entry point have to be dealt with alongside the cleaning.

What does duct cleaning cost in San Rafael, and why does it vary so much house to house?

The number tracks the system more than the square footage. A 1950s-60s one-story ranch north of the Civic Center with shallow attic runs and a straightforward layout is on the simpler end. A pre-1940 downtown Victorian or a Dominican or Montecito home with crawlspace sheet metal off an old gravity furnace takes longer: more register count, awkward access, and often mismatched duct added over decades of remodels. Rodent contamination, heavy sagging flex, or a crawl you can barely move in all push it up. We'd rather walk the crawl and the attic first and tell you what we're actually dealing with than guess from a phone call.

How soon can you get out here, and do you ever do same-day?

Same-day happens, mostly on cancellations and mostly for straightforward single-story systems. Normal scheduling is a few days out. Our busiest stretches are predictable in San Rafael: spring, when oak pollen is heavy and people start running the system again, and the first real heat of late summer, when everyone who's had their AC or heat pump sitting idle turns it on and gets a lungful of dust. In a bad fire year the phone doesn't stop. If you want a specific day, book ahead of those windows rather than during them.

We're putting in AC or a heat pump. Should the ducts be cleaned before or after?

After the install, generally. AC and heat-pump retrofits are getting common here because this inland pocket runs warmer and drier than the rest of Marin and the late-summer heat is real. Installers cut into existing duct, pull registers, and leave drywall dust and metal shavings behind, so cleaning first just means cleaning twice. The exception is if the existing ductwork is contaminated or has rodent activity, deal with that before new equipment pushes it through the house. It's also the right moment to look at whether the old crawlspace or under-floor runs can handle the airflow the new system wants, since a lot of them were sized for a gravity furnace and nothing else.