Pollen week on Edgewood Avenue: when Jacksonville ducts need cleaning, and when they need replacing

The week everything turns yellow

Around the last week of February, oak pollen arrives in Jacksonville in quantities that coat cars, porches and the tops of condensers from Riverside to Mandarin. Pine follows into April and May. It is the most allergic season on the First Coast, the filters go gray in two weeks, and it is when the phone starts ringing about duct cleaning.

It is a good week to think about ducts. It is a bad week to assume that cleaning is the answer. Jacksonville’s ducts fail in several ways, and only one of them is dirt. Before calling anyone, work through this list.

Seven things to check before you call anyone

1. Pull a supply register. Wipe the inside of the duct with a white cloth or swab. Dust is normal. A thick gray mat, black streaks or anything fuzzy is not.
2. Pull the return grille. The return is where attic or crawlspace air gets in if the duct leaks. A return cavity full of insulation fibers tells you the duct is open somewhere.
3. Check the filter date. A filter changed monthly from February through May and still dark in two weeks points at a leak upstream of the filter, not at dirty ducts.
4. Walk the house with your nose. A hot-attic smell at the registers in a 1960s Arlington or Westside ranch means attic air in the supply. A damp, earthy smell in a Riverside or Springfield bungalow means crawlspace air in the return.
5. Compare rooms. A back bedroom that is dusty, stuffy and never the right temperature is at the end of a long, leaky or crushed run.
6. Look up, or down. In the attic, look for flex duct lying flat, kinked around trusses, or disconnected at a boot. Under a crawlspace house, look for sagging runs, waterlines and joints that have pulled apart.
7. Think about the water. If the house took on river water in Matthew, Irma or Nicole, or sits in an AE flood zone in San Marco or Ortega, the ducts below the floor are suspect regardless of what they look like.

Findings that end the checklist

Some findings end the checklist:

• Anything fuzzy, black or green inside a duct or on a grille.
• Duct that has been under water.
• Evidence of rodents: droppings, chewed liner, a smell that gets worse when the system runs.
• Flex duct crushed flat, torn or disconnected.
• A return that opens into a crawlspace, attic or garage.
• Fiberglass duct board that is crumbling or whose liner is exposed.
• Someone in the house with asthma or allergies that worsen when the system starts.

Call 866-266-5709, describe what you found, and the visit is planned around it.

Schedule a duct inspection

What Cook’s actually does

The visit starts with a camera and a static-pressure reading, because the decision between cleaning, sealing, repairing and replacing is made by looking, not by assuming.

Cleaning is the right answer for ducts that are intact, sealed and dirty: a 2000s Mandarin or Oceanway house that has never had it done, or a Baymeadows townhouse after a renovation filled the ducts with drywall dust. The work uses a negative-air machine connected to the trunk, rotary brushes and compressed-air whips run from every register, cleaning of the blower compartment and coil, and reinstalled registers. Sanitizing is applied where growth was found.

Sealing is the answer for ducts that leak. Mastic at every joint and boot, sealed return cavities, and a leakage test before and after. In the 1950s to 1970s block ranches of Arlington and the Westside, sealing does more for dust and the JEA bill than any cleaning could.

Repair replaces crushed, torn or disconnected sections, rehangs sagging runs and fixes boots that have pulled away from the ceiling or floor.

Replacement is for flood-soaked crawlspace duct, crumbling duct board, rodent-infested runs and the undersized duct systems retrofitted into pre-1950 homes that were never designed for central air. A new duct system is also the moment to enlarge the return and size each run to the room.

Cook’s does all four with its own crews, dispatched from the Palm Coast headquarters about 74 minutes down I-95, and does not hand duct work to a subcontractor.

After the ducts are done

After a cleaning, change the filter at thirty days; it will catch what the cleaning loosened. After sealing or replacement, expect the system to run shorter cycles and the far bedroom to catch up, and watch the September JEA statement against last year’s. Keep the fan on AUTO so the coil dries between cycles. Have the coil and drain cleaned every spring, because a clean coil is what keeps clean ducts clean. And if the house is on the river, note where the new duct hangs and the height of the next king tide; after Nicole, that is simply part of owning a home in Riverside or San Marco.

Duct cleaning on an unsealed, leaking system is a temporary cosmetic. Sealed, intact ducts in a house with humidity under 55 percent rarely need cleaning more than once a decade. That is the outcome the inspection is aiming for.