Indoor air quality
Air duct cleaning in the Tri-Cities
A-One cleans supply and return ducts under negative pressure, so the dust that wind and harvest push into a Tri-Cities house leaves through the vacuum instead of the registers.
Chapter 01
Dust settles in Tri-Cities ducts faster than most homeowners expect
This is dry shrub-steppe country. Wind lifts fine dust off the fields around Pasco and Kennewick, harvest adds more, and every wildfire smoke season sends a haze into town that finds its way through door gaps and into the return. All of it rides the return air toward the filter, and whatever the filter misses settles in the return trunk, the plenum and the blower compartment.
Dust does not spread evenly. It collects where the air slows down: the bottom of a supply trunk, behind a damper, inside a boot where the flex duct meets the register. That is why the vents in one room can be furred with grey lint while the rest of the house looks fine, and why wiping the register grille never fixes it for long.
A media air filter cabinet and an insulated flex duct run between the trusses of a Tri-Cities attic
A-One cleans with negative pressure and agitation, not a shop vacuum
The job starts with a look. The tech opens the plenum, checks the trunks and the boots, and notes any flex duct that is torn, crushed or pulled off its collar before anything is disturbed. Then a high-powered vacuum connects to the main trunk and holds the whole duct system under negative pressure, so loosened dust is pulled out of the house instead of pushed into it.
With the vacuum pulling, the tech works down each run with agitation tools: rotating brushes and compressed air whips that knock dust off the duct walls and out of the boots. Register grilles come off and get washed. The return trunk and the blower compartment get the same treatment, because that is where the heaviest load sits, right behind the filter.
Chapter 03
A media filter and a regular change keep the ducts clean longer
A cleaning only lasts if the filter stops the dust before it reaches the ducts again. In the Tri-Cities that means checking the filter far more often than the label suggests during harvest and smoke season. A thin one inch filter can load up in a few weeks, and a loaded filter starves the blower and lets air slip around its edges.
A media filter cabinet, the deep filter box on the attic run in the photo above, gives the air a much longer path through the filter and needs changing less often. Ask the tech to show you the filter size, the arrow direction and the slot, so you can check it yourself between visits. A-One serves homes from Pasco to Richland and can match the right filter to your system.
A-One has worked on Tri-Cities heating and cooling systems since 1980. 2-Year Warranty on all service parts, with an optional 10 Year warranty on parts and labor.
Indoor Air QualitySince 1980
More from the A-One Indoor Air Quality crew
A-One finds where conditioned air escapes with duct leakage testing, repairs what sealant cannot bridge, and seals the rest from the inside as an Aeroseal certified dealer.
A yearly AC tune-up from A-One covers the system from the outdoor coil to the condensate drain, before dust and 100 degree afternoons turn a weak part into a breakdown.
A heating tune-up from A-One follows the furnace or heat pump from thermostat to exhaust, so weak parts are found in the fall and not on the coldest night.