Air Duct Cleaning in Cotati, CA

It depends on what we find once we're in the crawlspace. A lot of the early-1900s cottages and bungalows around the downtown core had their original gravity system converted rather than torn out, so you get oversized sheet metal trunks feeding undersized returns, plus branches added during later remodels. If the metal is sound and the joints are still sealed, cleaning is worth doing and the system will move air noticeably better afterward. If the trunks are rusted through at the seams, crushed where someone crawled over them, or the flex added in a remodel is torn, cleaning alone won't fix it, and we'll say so. We'd rather tell you a section needs repair or replacement than clean a duct that's pulling crawlspace air.

Rodent activity is the big one in the older raised-foundation stock. Crawlspaces here are accessible to critters, and once they're in a duct you're dealing with droppings and nesting material, not just dirt. The second recurring issue is leaking joints on the old converted ductwork, where tape has given up and the connection has pulled apart. On the newer slab homes toward the edges of town, it's a different problem: attic flex that's kinked, sagging between supports, or disconnected at a boot. That usually shows up as one room that never gets cool in August.

Cotati is compact and sits right at the 101/116 junction, so getting a truck here isn't the hard part. Most weeks we can schedule within a few days. Late spring and early summer are busiest, when people start running the AC for the long cooling season and notice the smell or the dust, and we get another rush in the fall when smoke moves through. If you call in those stretches, book a little further ahead.

Sometimes, usually when a cancellation opens up or we're already working nearby in Cotati or just up the road. Same-day is easier for a straightforward slab-and-attic home than for an older place where we don't yet know what's under the floor. Crawlspace work on the converted systems takes longer and we'd rather not start it at the end of a day. Call and ask what's open. We'll be honest about whether today is realistic.

Access and the age of the system, mostly. A postwar or later home on a slab with attic flex and a normal return count is the simpler job. An older bungalow near the center with a low crawlspace, oversized trunks, undersized returns and extra branches added over the years takes more time. If there's rodent contamination, the work changes; that needs removal and sanitizing, not just vacuuming. Number of supply registers matters too. We look at the system and tell you what it'll take before we start pulling vents.