You have seen the ad: whole-house air duct cleaning, $49. Sometimes $69, sometimes “unlimited vents.” It runs constantly in South Florida, and it is almost never what it appears to be. Here is how to tell a real duct cleaning from a sales call with a vacuum attached.
How the bait-and-switch works
The advertised price gets a technician to your door. Once inside, the job changes. Common versions:
- Per-vent pricing appears. The $49 covered a set number of vents — often far fewer than your house has — and the rest are extra.
- “You have mold.” A quick look in a supply register becomes an urgent mold remediation quote, with no testing and no sample sent anywhere.
- The main trunk line is “not included.” Which is where most of the debris actually is.
- Sanitizer, deodorizer and UV add-ons presented as necessary rather than optional.
- The price only holds today. Urgency is the tell.
The result is a quote several times the advertised number, delivered by someone standing in your hallway. Some homeowners pay it. Others send the tech away having had a shop vac run into a few registers.
What a real cleaning actually involves
Duct cleaning is a mechanical process, and it takes time. Done properly it includes:
- Negative pressure on the system. A high-powered vacuum — truck-mounted or a portable unit with HEPA filtration — is connected to the duct system so that everything dislodged travels into the collection unit rather than into your living room.
- Agitation of every run. Rotary brushes or compressed-air whips work each supply and return individually. Vacuuming alone does not remove material bonded to duct wall.
- The trunk line and plenum. Not just the branches.
- Registers and grilles removed and cleaned, not wiped in place.
- Access to the blower compartment and evaporator coil, which is where a large share of the restriction usually sits.
On a typical South Florida home that is several hours of work for a crew, not forty minutes for one person. The math on $49 does not work, and it was never meant to.
Questions worth asking before anyone comes out
- Is the price per vent or for the whole system? Get the total in writing, including trunk lines and returns.
- How many vents does that cover, and what happens past that number?
- What equipment do you use? You are listening for vacuum collection and agitation, not “we have a vacuum.”
- Are you licensed and insured in Florida? Ask for the certificate.
- Will you show me before-and-after photos of my actual ducts? Any legitimate company does this without being asked.
- If you find mold, what happens next? The right answer involves testing and a separate scope — not a price quoted on the spot from a flashlight look.
On mold specifically
Mold in ductwork is real and it is genuinely common in this climate — humidity, condensation and a system that runs most of the year. That is exactly why it is such effective leverage for a bad actor. A company that diagnoses mold visually in ninety seconds and quotes remediation the same visit is selling, not diagnosing. We wrote about what actually causes it in mold in air ducts.
What it should cost
A legitimate cleaning is priced on the size of the system and the number of runs, quoted before anyone arrives, and it does not change once a technician is inside your house. We put realistic local numbers in air duct cleaning cost in South Florida so you can judge a quote before you accept it.
South Florida Ducts has been cleaning air ducts across Broward County for years, with pricing quoted up front and photographs of your own system before and after. No coupon, no upsell at the door.
Want a straight quote? Call (954) 909-4281.