As a business owner, you quickly learn to be skeptical when someone tells you that you “need” a service they provide. How can you be certain about whether you should invest? In the HVAC industry, commercial air duct cleaning often faces many of these same questions and skepticism. After all, when you can’t see deep inside your ducts, how can you know that they need cleaning? For that matter, does cleaning make any difference at all — or is it something else that doesn’t actually represent a good usage of your maintenance budget?
A look at the facts reveals the truth. HVAC professionals today can easily use lengthy, flexible CCTV cameras to inspect your ducts from the inside. It might surprise you to note how much dust accumulates inside, and you may even see the presence of rodent droppings — or an actual mouse. Taking the time to enlist experienced help for cleaning inside these crucial components of your HVAC system brings with it several benefits, too. Here’s what you can enjoy after cleaning.
Commercial Air Duct Cleaning Improves Air Quality
Clean air is essential for a functional commercial space, and it’s about more than air that smells good. Dirty ducts can allow air passing through them to pick up and distribute more airborne particles, which can irritate allergies, cause eye irritation, and introduce other problems into the space that can dramatically impact productivity. For example, the EPA makes a particular point of the importance of good indoor air quality in schools, which often use commercial HVAC systems. Failure to properly control air quality can lead to increased absenteeism, lower morale, and even additional wear and tear on your HVAC equipment. For this reason alone, periodic duct cleaning is worth investigating.
Remove Potential Pathogens and Mold
Dust is far from the only unwanted substance that accumulates within the ductwork. Mold can grow, particularly in humid climates, and spread throughout the ductwork. Many people exhibit some form of allergic sensitivity to mold, and in severe cases, mold may even aggravate respiratory conditions. Ensuring that it is eliminated in your ducts is crucial. Likewise, cleaning removes droppings left behind by rodents and other small animals that may enter the ducts from outdoors.
Eliminate Odors
Has your HVAC system ever turned on and immediately filled the room with an unpleasant smell? Maybe it smells like a basement or carries with it a damp odor — these are usually signs of mold and mildew development. However, dirty ducts can introduce unpleasant smells into the air over time in any number of ways. Commercial air duct cleaning eliminates the sources of these odors and, in combination with the aforementioned air quality improvements, helps to prevent them from reoccurring. This portion of the service is particularly essential when small animals become trapped and die in the ductwork; your cleaners will take care to remove any remains and to sanitize the ducts in the process.
Protect Sensitive Environments in Specialized Applications
In some buildings, the management of HVAC systems is a challenge. When clean environments must be maintained, whether in hospitals, laboratories, or certain types of manufacturing applications, air ducts can provide a potential vector for contamination if they do not receive careful monitoring. While operations like these may use industrial-grade HEPA filters to help reduce the spread of airborne particles, filters are not perfect. More frequent duct cleaning is advisable for these applications. Your contractor can even help by conducting periodic inspections to determine the extent of any contamination.
Improve Employee Morale by Reducing Unpleasant Symptoms
With fresh air that’s always at the right temperature, your staff will seldom need to worry about becoming distracted by thoughts about the HVAC system’s performance. Instead, periodic cleanings — just like regular maintenance — help this critical infrastructure fade into the background. When things “just work,” commercial enterprises can refocus efforts on the actual business of the day, and not distractions caused by dirty ducts. Considering the longer periods that can elapse between cleanings, it’s a cost-effective proposal, too.
Protect Your HVAC System with Professional Duct Cleaning Today
With a range of beneficial outcomes to commercial air duct cleaning, exploring your options should start to make more sense. There’s good news, too: this is not a service you will require very often (unless you need a highly clean environment at all times). The National Air Duct Cleaning Association suggests three years as the minimum time frame for duct cleaning, with up to five years for buildings that do not experience high levels of dust accumulation or other environmental concerns. With benefits that impact both your operations and your employees, decide today if it’s time to explore how your HVAC contractors of choice can help give your ductwork the deep clean it needs.