Commercial duct cleaners are essentially scammers.

Visually inspect the inside of ducts, as much a you can gain access. Just
sample them. You will probably find that they are as clean as a whistle.

Even after our house was smoke-damaged, there was no soot and no dirt in the
ducts. Save your money.

Commercial cleaners use a combination rotating power-blast nozzle and vacuum
cleaner nozzle, which they insert in the ducts as a unit.

--
Walter
www.rationality.net
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"hr(bob) " wrote in message
...
On May 14, 8:16 am, Limp Arbor wrote:
My lovely wife wants the vents in our house cleaned.

Removing the register covers is not a problem. The stackhead or
register box in the walls have an adjustable slide door to control the
flow. Oval 5" ducts in the walls transition to 5" round in the
basement. Two story house with all supply vents on the outside walls.

I could easily disconnect the ducts in the basement and rig up a way
to connect my shop-vac in the basement to each duct. This would
probably be eaiser than trying to seal all the vents and vaccum from
the main trunk or furnace.

Question: Waht kind of tool do I need to clean the vents?

When I questioned a guy about doing this he said he would run a thin
hose through the grills and used high-pressure air to blast the dust
loose and connected a 'recovery vaccum' in the basement.

This tool is a long shot but I am sure someobody has a better
idea.http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...temnumber=9239...

10' is long enough to get me to the basement but this thing is flimsy
and I doubt would do much.

I would put the vacuum in the basement as you suggested, and then use
the tool pictured to go up and down the ducts (not vents) to loosen
whatever would come loose. I have never figured out why you would
mess with the ducts as the dirt that is in them does not move and
except for harboring bugs does not cause any harm. Loose dust will
come out and is not in the ducts. Only when dirt builds up and
restricts airflow is there a problem (in my opinion). No matter what,
when you first turn on the airflow again, there will be a cloud of
dust coming outof every register since the vacuum cannot get
everything that is loosened up out. I would put something to catch
the worst of the loosened dust in front of every register when I first
turned on the airflow.