I recently used ELOS Duct Cleaning and have had time to thinking about the performed service. The two person team arrived on time, and gave me a courtesy call they were on the way, and took off their shoes while inside.
After giving them the tour of where all the vents are, they unloaded their large handcart vacuum and both of them wheeled it to my top floor. They explained the vacuum apparatus that it contains three filters, the top filter gets changed for each location collecting large debris, while the other filters gets changed after a few uses. They also explained the compressed air hose, that it blows air backwards, while the large vacuum hose sucks all the floating debris that is handheld at the vent.
So the first vent is on a ceiling that is angled about 45deg, the hose will be going against gravity and incline. The compressed air hose is maybe 20', so there's a possibility it won't reach ducts far away.
I have my doubts all of my ducts were throughly cleaned, namely the central/core ducts. I ask if they go all the way down to the furnace, but was told they clean from the register and the ducts join to a central duct, the next vent would clean the rest, and so on.
Anyways, after the first vent, I let them do their thing. When they moved the vacuum downstairs, I went up to check things over and found some black marks left by the hose they draped over the wood railings. When notified, they promptly cleaned it with their baby-wipes. I then went and checked my other walls where the hose was cornering and placed a buffer to prevent future marks.
Oh yea, good thing I placed a sheet over the beds, they didn't put any tarp on the floor, and after they left I went and vacuumed my carpets of drywall flakes.
The next set of ducts were easy, they were off the floor, and went through in about five minutes.
They also cleaned the returns and also scraped some flaking paint from inside the metal flashing.
The last floor took a bit longer, just due to the amount of construction junk that was left under the furnace platform a decade ago.
So at $30/vent, my ducts were cleaned... to a certain length. I still have my doubts the central ducts are clean. Other than checking on my furnace filter (who said wasn't that dirty, whereas another company said its time to change it) and baby wiping part of the inside furnace, nothing else was cleaned on the unit. Which is a different service. They also didn't turn on the furnace to reinspect the ducts for any debris that might later blow out.
They did adjust the furnace filter hook so that my air filter would stay down. Actually, they macgyver'd it. But I later found out that it would have worked fine in the original location with the hooks coming down to hold the filter.
While every vendor does their process differently and offer different services, I would have preferred that my ducts were sucked from a central location and that it was internally cleaned all the way to the furnace. I went with ELOS because they told me "they do it the right way" when I spoke to them on the phone.
They finished in about two hours, wrote up the quote/paperwork at the end.
I've used the heater a few times since the cleaning, granted I only use it a total of no more than 48hrs/yr (I like the cold) , the rooms warm up faster then before the cleaning but I think that happened whenever I change to a new filter. Whether it was the cleaning or the air filter change that helped.... that will be answered next year when I change the filter again. read more