It depends on your house. For a lot of homes in Waukesha and Milwaukee County a cleaning every few years is money well spent. For some it can wait. Here is how to tell which one you are.
Your furnace runs hard from October through April around here. Every hour it runs, it pulls air from your rooms through the return vents and pushes it back out through the supply vents. Whatever dust, pet hair and debris is sitting in those ducts goes along for the ride.
When It Pays Off
A cleaning is usually worth it when something has put a lot of dust into the system or when it has simply been a long time.
- You just bought the house and have no idea when the ducts were last cleaned
- You remodeled, sanded drywall or refinished floors
- You have pets that shed, especially more than one
- Someone in the house smokes or used to
- You see dust blowing out of the vents when the furnace kicks on
- You find mouse droppings or nesting near the furnace or registers
- It has been more than 3 to 5 years
New construction is a big one in Waukesha County. Subdivisions in Pewaukee, Sussex, Oconomowoc and Waukesha go up fast, and drywall dust ends up in the ducts before anyone moves in. We pull a lot of construction debris out of homes that are only a year or two old.
In Milwaukee County it is often the opposite. Older homes in Wauwatosa, Shorewood, Whitefish Bay and the city itself can have long trunk lines that have never been cleaned. Decades of settled dust add up, and a cleaning makes a visible difference.
When You Can Wait
Not every house needs it right now. If your home is a few years past its last cleaning, nobody has allergies, there are no pets and you change your furnace filter on schedule, you can probably wait.
A good filter does a lot of the work. Change it every one to three months during heating season and you slow down how fast dust builds up. If you open a register and the inside looks clean, that tells you something too.
What It Costs Here
Prices around Waukesha and Milwaukee vary a lot from company to company. Some charge by the vent, some by the room and some use a low coupon price that grows once the crew is inside.
SimpliHome charges $0.22 per square foot. A 2,000 square foot home comes out to $440 for the full system. Spread over 3 to 5 years, that is roughly $90 to $150 a year. You get before and after photos of every vent, so you can see what you paid for. Try the calculator in our Brookfield pricing guide to see your own number.
If you want to know what separates an honest company from the rest, read our post on spotting a duct cleaning scam.
The Bottom Line
A cleaning is worth it when your ducts are actually dirty. New construction dust, an older home with years of buildup, pets or a recent move all make it a smart spend. If none of that fits your house, keep changing your filter and check again in a year.
Not sure where your home falls? Get a free quote and we will tell you honestly whether it is time. You can also see our before and after photos from homes across Waukesha and Milwaukee County.