The People Behind the Work

Los Gatos sits where the Santa Clara Valley meets the Santa Cruz Mountain front, and that location sets the work. The cooling season runs long, roughly May through October, while the heating season stays short and mild, so systems cycle year-round at low load rather than shutting down for months. Five rainless months pull fine valley dust, oak and grass pollen, and road grit through return sides. Spring oak pollen and summer grass pollen are heavy on the hill flanks. Wildfire smoke events in late summer and fall load filters and leave fine particulate settled in supply trunks. Add unconditioned attics that hit 130-150F and degrade flex duct inner liner and tape over time, plus crawlspace runs under older homes sitting in damp soil air through the rainy season, and you get the calls we take most: dust blowing out of supply vents after a smoke week, a musty smell when the furnace first runs in November, and uneven airflow in houses built before the mid-1970s that were ducted for heating only, with cooling added later onto undersized trunks.

Here is what shows up at your house. A truck-mounted vacuum stays at the curb or driveway, with the collection line run to the trunk near the air handler so the debris never travels through your living space. We seal every register with film before anything starts, then open the system one branch at a time and put the negative pressure where it belongs. Rotary brushes and air whips go down each run to break material loose off the walls so the vacuum can carry it out. Flex gets gentler tools than sheet metal, because that attic-baked inner liner tears if you treat it like rigid duct. We clean the return drop, the blower compartment, and the evaporator side when access allows. We photograph before and after so you are not taking our word for it. We work on Carrier, Trane, Lennox, Goodman, Rheem, and American Standard equipment. We are comfortable in older crawlspace systems and newer attic installs too.

We also tell people when their ducts are fine. If you opened a vent, looked in, and saw a light film, that is normal. Cleaning it will not change anything you can feel. Plenty of Los Gatos calls end with us suggesting a better filter and a tighter replacement schedule instead, especially during smoke season. If the real problem is weak airflow at the far rooms, sealing leaks in the trunk and boots usually does more than cleaning. If it is a smell that comes on with the AC and not the heat, the issue is often the evaporator, and coil cleaning is the fix. On cost, the things that move the number on a duct job here are the count of supply and return runs, whether the system is one zone or two, how the air handler is reached (a tight attic in August or a low crawlspace takes longer than a garage closet), and whether aged flex has to be worked around carefully rather than brushed straight through. We walk the house and tell you which of those apply to yours.