“What, another thing I need to get cleaned regularly?” We know that keeping track of various maintenance tasks for a house can feel daunting, but duct cleaning is actually one that’s easy to have scheduled and completed. You don’t need it done every year, but it’s worth arranging for every 3 to 5 years. So if you’ve never had air duct cleaning done for your home before, you’re probably overdue for it.
Ah, but we haven’t got to the “why” part of duct cleaning. Why do you need to have this job done at all? There are many reasons, but since we’re settled into the heat of summer now, we’re going to look at how clean air ducts is good for your air conditioning system. (And we’ll throw in a mention of the heater as well in the parentheses, in case you reading this in the winter.)
We may joke about how during our hot and humid Louisiana summers the air conditioners have to be running nonstop. Of course, there are cooler spells and evenings when ACs power down, and no air conditioner needs to power the compressor constantly to meet a home’s cooling demands. (At least, not if it was correctly sized for the space when it was installed.)
Your air conditioning system works hard on hot days—that’s what it’s there for, after all! But even an air conditioning system can get too hot, causing its motors to trip the circuit breaker to the system. You can reset the breaker, but it’s likely to happen again and again and again. Not an inconvenience you want during the summer!
If you’ve lived through a summer here in Louisiana, you understand that humidity is a serious problem for comfort. Even mild warm days can feel like a blistering 90°F when the relative humidity level is high enough. The reason for this is that the higher moisture levels in the air trap heat inside the body, making it harder for it to release the excess heat through perspiring. Humidity causes other troubles as well: encouraging mold and mildew growth and causing water damage to surfaces.
If you looked up the word refrigerant in a dictionary, you’d probably come across a definition like this:
You’ve had your current air conditioner for more than ten years. Maybe more than fifteen or twenty. It’s just not working as well as it used to, or it’s started to run up astronomical bills each summer. Maybe it’s breaking down frequently and needs repair to keep it hobbling on. Or you might feel it’s time to retire it before all of those things start happening.
We always encourage our customers to schedule spring air conditioning maintenance with us. We don’t want to be a pest about this, but it is extremely important to have these inspections and tune-ups done each year before the big summer heat and humidity arrives. There are many reasons why air conditioning maintenance is such an important job, and we’re going to look at a few specific problems an AC that doesn’t have spring maintenance done might run into. 
Spring cleaning covers more than just sweeping up dust in a house after the winter is over. One vital cleaning job you should consider scheduling this spring if you haven’t had it done for a number of years is air duct cleaning. A clean ventilation system improves the performance of your air conditioning system (and your heater as well when it gets back to work in fall), lowers the amount of dust inside the system that can cause repair needs, and prevents steep drops in energy efficiency.
Winter officially ends this week, and we hope you already have plans for your air conditioning maintenance. Early spring is the best time to do it!
