New Mexico HVAC Pros
Flexible insulated HVAC ducts and an air handler unit installed in a dusty attic with a skylight.

Duct Cleaning in Gallup, NM

Tell us about your home, and a licensed contractor who covers McKinley County will get in touch.

Tell us about the job

It takes about a minute.

Step 1 of 3: Equipment
Flexible silver HVAC ducts and a metal air handler unit sit on a wood-framed attic floor covered with loose-fill fiberglass insulation.

Eight months of heating pushes dust through your ducts all winter

Your furnace runs October through May here, eight months of the year. That is eight months of air moving through the same trunk lines and runs, and every pass carries a little more dust into the ductwork.

McKinley County has logged 64 damaging wind events over the past ten years. Wind like that drives dust against a house, and some of it works its way in through gaps around doors and windows. Once it settles in the ducts, the furnace blows it back into the rooms every time it runs.

8 months
October through May, your furnace pushes air through your ducts
2 months
July through August, your air conditioner does the same
Isometric cutaway illustration of a house interior showing ductwork running from a furnace through rooms with furniture, a bathroom, and a bedroom, under a shingled roof.
Your ducts carry heat October through May and cooled air July through August.

NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals

How often should air ducts be cleaned?
There is no fixed schedule that fits every house. Homes with pets, a recent renovation, or someone with allergies tend to need it sooner than others. If you can see dust building up around the vents or the air coming out smells stale, that is a better sign to go by than any set number of years.
Is air duct cleaning worth it?
It depends on what is going on in the ducts right now. If there is visible dust, debris, or signs of pests inside them, cleaning gets that out of the air you breathe and off the coil and blower where it tends to build up. If the ducts look clean and nobody in the house has new allergy symptoms, there may be nothing to gain from it yet. A contractor can look inside the ductwork and tell you honestly whether it needs doing.
What does air duct cleaning involve?
A contractor connects a vacuum system to the ductwork and uses brushes or air tools to knock loose dust and debris from the inside of the duct walls, then pulls it out through the vacuum before it resettles. Registers and grilles get cleaned too, since they collect the same dust. The furnace or air handler blower compartment and coil are often cleaned at the same time, since air passes through them on the way to the ducts.
Find a contractor