Air Duct Cleaning in Los Altos Hills, CA

Frequently Asked Questions

My house has ducts in both the attic and the crawlspace — can you clean all of it in one visit?

Yes, and on Los Altos Hills homes that's usually what the job looks like. Many of the 1950s–1980s custom hillside houses here are multi-level, so the trunk and branches get split: part of the run sits in a vented attic, the rest drops into a crawlspace or under-floor cavity following the slope of the foundation. We plan for both access points before we start, because the crawlspace side often takes longer (tighter clearances, sloped grade, and registers in floors rather than ceilings). If the home has two or three zoned systems, each one is its own air handler, its own return, and its own set of runs, so we scope it that way instead of treating the house as a single system.

We keep finding droppings near a floor register. Is that a duct problem?

Often, yes. Rodent intrusion from the surrounding oak woodland and grassland is one of the most common things we find here. The usual pattern is chewed flex liner in the crawlspace and nesting material packed into the boots under floor registers. Cleaning removes the debris and nesting, but if the liner is torn open or the boot connection is broken, cleaning alone won't fix it. That duct is pulling crawlspace air. We'll show you what we find and tell you plainly whether it's a cleaning job, a repair job, or both. Sealing the entry point matters too, otherwise it comes back.

After a smoky stretch in late summer, how soon can you get out here?

Late summer is our heaviest window in the foothills, because wildland-urban-interface smoke exposure sends a lot of calls at once. Outside that period we can usually schedule within a few days. During and right after a smoke event, expect a longer wait, and the honest answer is that duct cleaning is secondary to filtration right then. A fresh filter and keeping the system from pulling outside air will do more for you in the first week than anything in the ductwork. Once the air clears, cleaning the returns and the supply runs is worthwhile, especially if the system ran a lot while the air was bad.

What makes a Los Altos Hills job cost more or less than a typical house?

A few things move the number here. First, system count: a home with two or three zoned systems is effectively two or three jobs, and that's the biggest single factor. Second, where the ducts live: attic runs are straightforward, but under-floor runs on a sloped foundation with low crawlspace clearance take real time to work through. Third, condition. Crawlspace runs on these hillsides pick up soil moisture, and if there's rodent damage or nesting we're dealing with, that's a different scope than a clean, intact system. Long driveways and detached garages where the equipment sits matter a little too. We walk the house and both access areas before quoting, so the figure reflects your actual layout rather than an average.