Last Updated on May 29, 2025 by SampleBoard
Are you or anyone from your family suffering from breathing issues or unexplained allergies?
Have you recently experienced a water leakage or outburst at your home?
If yes, it's time to pay attention to your air ducts, not just your home's furniture, electronics, and other essentials.
A flood or other water damage will likely degrade your home's air quality. When your HVAC is exposed to moisture, mold buildup can ruin the ducts and affect your health.
As mold and mildew can grow within 48 hours, just letting your HVAC system dry out on its own is insufficient.
All parts, like coils, fans, or chambers, should be cleaned and disinfected to ensure a properly functioning system.
If cleaning is insufficient, you may also need to replace the entire system after completing the process to prevent future issues.
It's heartbreaking to witness any water leakage, pipe burst, or flood inside your home, and cleaning up the mess can be a significant challenge.
The restoration plan depends on the damage categories, which are as follows.
This damage includes damage from clean water, such as rain, melting snow, leaky pipes, sinks, showers, or bathtubs. These do not pose any risk after exposure and do not require disinfection, as the space quickly dries out.
In this case, water damage, overflow water, or urine from the toilet, washing machine, dishwasher, aquarium, or sump pump damages your property and thus needs disinfection.
This includes black water from sewage or drainage systems, which contains bacteria and viruses that pose health risks when exposed to such outbreaks.
While Category 1 damage is less risky, you should not neglect Category 2 and 3 damage to prevent future losses.
Your home's humidity should be below 60% to prevent mold from breeding in your living space.
After cleaning and sanitizing the entire area following water damage, you proceed with the restoration process.
Water damage restoration is all about repairing water-damaged property, which involves water extraction, debris cleanup, drying and dehumidifying the entire area, sanitizing the affected space, and restoring damaged items.
Water damage restoration is different from the water removal process.
While water removal involves draining water away from the damaged space, water restoration consists in restoring the property to its original condition.
Here is a walkthrough to help you understand the overall restoration process.
Water damage restoration is all about cleaning the water mess.
However, the cost can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on various factors such as labor, the severity of the damage, and location, including the roof, floors, drywall, and ceiling.
According to US EPA estimates, 90% of Americans spend their time indoors, and it also states that the quality of air indoors may be 2-5 times more degraded than outdoors.
Your air duct is the most significant source of impure air containing moisture, mold, pests, or other contaminants.
Therefore, to maintain a healthy environment, it is essential to conduct routine cleaning and maintenance work every 3-5 years.
Consider cleaning your air ducts whenever you encounter one or more of the following scenarios.
It's always a good idea to hire a licensed professional to clean your duct, as you never know what pops up from that hidden area.
A professional completes the whole cleaning process in three steps: inspection, duct cleaning, and post-cleaning inspection.
After you hire a professional to clean your air ducts, the process starts with a thorough inspection.
After checking all the access points, all the cleaning techniques will be decided based on the intensity of water damage in your air ducts.
Once the inspection is over, your air duct cleaning process starts.
During the cleaning process, your service experts create a negative pressure using a vacuum unit to ensure that no dust particles, pollen, or debris are spread throughout your home.
A well-experienced team of experts will focus on minor details and conduct each activity, from cleaning to sanitizing, using the right tools and a powerful vacuum, so that you get back fresh and well-conditioned air ducts, saving you from allergies and inflated energy bills.
After completing the cleaning task, a second round of inspection is conducted to ensure that everything is up to standard and no traces of water or dirt are left behind.
Once you clean out the duct area, you get many benefits, apart from peace of mind about breathing good-quality air.
You also reduce your energy bills, as your HVAC system will no longer strain to maintain your desired temperature.
Your health improves, and you no longer have to fight the constant repetitive allergies.
So, with clean air ducts, you save a lot of money that could end up in your HVAC repair costs, health costs, or electricity bills.
