Air Duct & Dryer Vent Cleaning questions from Denton County homeowners

$395 to $495 for a single-system home, with every supply, every return, the trunk lines and both plenums included, and the runs resealed where they have pulled apart. A second system on the same visit adds $250, which comes up on most calls from Argyle, Lantana and the larger Flower Mound lots. Dryer vent cleaning is $129 alone or $475 to $575 with the ducts. The price is set on the phone from the square footage and the system count, and it is the price on the invoice.

Clean it, in most cases. Flex duct that age has sagged between its supports and pulled loose at the collars, and the dust sits in the low spots. The crew lifts the runs back onto their straps, seals the collars and the plenum joints with mastic, and pulls the dust out under negative pressure. Replacement is the call only when the inner liner has torn or a run has been crushed flat, and the photos show that before anyone prices it.

Every year. A second-floor laundry in Flower Mound or Highland Village usually vents up through the attic and out a roof cap, and that run is long enough, with enough elbows, that a year of lint narrows it. Between cleanings, watch for towels that take two cycles, a dryer top that is hot to the touch, and lint on the shingles around the cap. A cap with a screen on it gets the screen removed as part of the cleaning.

A single-system house takes most of a morning or an afternoon; a second system adds to that. Someone has to open the door and walk the house with the technician at the start, and we want you there at the end for the photos. Between those two points you can leave.

Usually not. It is applied only after a cleaning and only when the camera shows growth, it is an EPA-registered product labeled for HVAC use, and it runs $99 to $149. The house is aired out afterward and you get the product sheet. If the camera shows dust and nothing else, nobody will suggest it.

Denton County runs the air conditioner from March into November, and everything in the air, from mountain cedar and oak pollen to fall ragweed, construction dust and pet dander, ends up in the ducts. Cleaning takes out what has already settled in the runs, so the system stops blowing last season's pollen back into the rooms. It does nothing about what comes in through an open door in January when the cedar is up, and a filter swapped on schedule does more for that than a cleaning does.

Texas adopts the International Residential Code statewide, and the edition varies by city: Flower Mound moved to the 2024 codes on October 1, 2025, while Lewisville and Denton are on the 2021 edition. Both editions cap a dryer exhaust duct at 35 feet, deducting 5 feet for every tight mitered 90-degree elbow and under 2 feet for a smooth long-radius one, and require smooth metal duct with no screws protruding more than an eighth of an inch into the airflow, a backdraft damper at the termination, and no screen on it. In practice the fix is the same in all three cities: rigid metal duct, the shortest route to the cap, long-radius elbows where a turn cannot be avoided, and a cap with a damper and no screen. Repair and rerouting runs $150 to $400.

Once, after the builder is done. The system usually ran through drywall sanding and was not cleaned afterward, which is why the registers in a two-year-old Little Elm or Aubrey house blow a fine white dust when the air comes on. The EPA says to clean when there is a reason rather than on a calendar, and in Denton County the reasons come around on a schedule: every three to five years with pets or allergies, five to seven without, once after any construction or remodel, and once in a new home after the builder is done.

Yes. About a quarter of Denton County's roughly 400,000 housing units are in multifamily buildings, and in Lewisville and Denton apartments make up close to four in ten homes, so communities in Lewisville, Denton, The Colony and along SH 121 commonly have long or shared dryer vent runs. An annual cleaning with photo documentation is what property managers and their insurers typically ask for. A program is priced per unit from the vent count and the run lengths, with a photo of each vent before and after and a report for the manager's file.

The blower compartment is vacuumed on every duct cleaning and photographed. Cleaning the blower wheel and the evaporator coil is its own job at $249 to $349, worth it when the coil has never been cleaned, the airflow at the registers is weak, or the system froze up last summer. Texas lets an unlicensed crew clean ductwork from the supply plenum to the grilles if nothing is cut, no electrical connections are changed and only grilles come off. Opening the air handler to clean the blower wheel and coil goes beyond that, so that work is done by or under a TDLR-licensed air conditioning contractor.

Texas has no separate duct cleaning license. TDLR rules allow duct cleaning without an air conditioning license as long as the work stays inside the duct system with no cuts or electrical changes, so insurance and method are what matter. The crew carries general liability insurance, works to the NADCA ACR standard, and sends before-and-after photos.