Whole-system duct and dryer vent check with before-and-after photos - you see exactly what came out of your vents
That "$99 whole-house special" is a bait ad - the real number appears once they are in your hallway, or the "clean" is a shop-vac at the register. We photograph the inside of your ducts before and after instead.
Lennox Air Duct Cleaning in Palo Alto, CA
Lennox air duct cleaning in Palo Alto typically runs $450 – $850 for a full single-system home, depending on duct length, access, and how much smoke residue has settled in the blower wheel and return runs. We’re independent specialists, not a Lennox dealer or authorized service center, and the one thing that sets our Lennox work apart here is that we know what Palo Alto’s Eichlers, Crawlspace retrofits, and wildfire seasons actually do to Lennox equipment. If you own a Lennox Merit, Elite, or Signature system and the air inside your Palo Alto home feels stale, dusty, or faintly smoky months after fire season ended, call (833) 620-7085 for a free estimate. We bring Rotobrush contact-cleaning systems and Nikro HEPA negative-air machines, the same class of equipment used in commercial restoration, into residential Palo Alto homes every week.
Why Palo Alto Residents Choose Us for Lennox Service
Most duct cleaners in Palo Alto treat a Lennox system the same way they’d treat any builder-grade setup: run a brush through, vacuum the registers, and leave. We don’t. Lennox variable-speed blowers, Healthy Climate filtration cabinets, and HRV/ERV cores respond differently to cleaning than single-speed equipment, and they fail differently when that cleaning is skipped or done wrong. Neal Drummond, our owner, grew up in Crescent Park and trained through Foothill College’s HVAC and building systems program in Los Altos Hills before spending more than a decade mapping and cleaning duct systems across the Peninsula. He got into this trade after his daughter’s allergy symptoms led to a home inspection that found a supply trunk packed with years of accumulated debris. That inspection changed how he thought about indoor air, and it’s why we approach every Lennox job in Palo Alto as a diagnostic exercise rather than a surface wipe. We also carry OEM Lennox parts for blower motors and coil assemblies when replacement is needed, which means we can often resolve what we find on the same visit instead of sending you to a dealer across the Bay. For a broader look at how we handle the brand across models and equipment lines, see our Lennox sales & service page.
Styles & brands we work with
- Whole-home duct cleaning
- Dryer vent cleaning
- Camera inspection
- Sanitizing & deodorizing
Common Lennox Air Duct Cleaning Problems We Solve in Palo Alto
These are the failures we see repeatedly in Palo Alto Lennox homes. Not generic “dirty ducts” talking points. Specific failure modes tied to this city’s housing and climate.
- Ash-loaded variable-speed blower wheels. Elite and Signature furnaces like the SLP98V and XC25 use ECM blower motors that spin at precise RPMs. Fine wildfire ash from the Santa Cruz Mountains and Diablo Range settles on the blades, throws off the wheel’s balance, and forces the motor to work harder. We clean the wheel with brush-contact Rotobrush heads and verify it with video, because an imbalanced blower in a $4M Palo Alto home sounds the same as one in a tract house but wrecks motor bearings faster.
- Dust-matted evaporator coils in cased plenums. Lennox coils sit on the return side of the air handler. When return ducts are undersized or unsealed, which is common in 1950s – 60s south Palo Alto tract homes and Eichlers, the coil face loads with compacted dust and triggers high static pressure, frozen coils, and reduced airflow. We clean upstream of the coil, not just the ducts, and we’ll tell you if sealing is the real fix.
- Crushed or disconnected flex returns in tight crawlspaces. Older north Palo Alto Craftsman and Spanish Revival homes often have Lennox retrofit systems with flex runs jammed into crawlspaces that were never designed for central air. Lines sag, kink, and pop off collars, pulling attic and crawl air into the supply stream. We map the runs before cleaning, because cleaning a crushed duct without repairing it is a waste of your money.
- Smoke-loaded Healthy Climate media cabinets and HRV/ERV cores. Palo Alto homeowners who run Lennox Healthy Climate filtration during fire season often find their media cabinet caked with ash within weeks. The filter does what the filter does. But when the core or cabinet restricts airflow, the system’s filtration effectiveness drops with it. We service the cabinet and core as part of a full-system cleaning, not as an afterthought.
- Blower wheels and returns in homes near Arastradero Preserve and Foothill Expressway. Smoke settles overnight in the foothills, and homes along these corridors collect more of it than flatland Palo Alto neighborhoods. We routinely find smoke residue on return grilles and blower wheels in these homes months after the last fire, and it’s the single most common reason homeowners call us for a Lennox duct cleaning in this part of town.
Lennox Service in Palo Alto: What Local Conditions Mean for Your Equipment
Here’s the Palo Alto-specific insight no generic Lennox page or generic duct cleaning page will give you. In Eichler and 1950s – 60s south-side homes, original Lennox retrofits often used undersized flex runs snaked through tight crawlspaces. Those installations were marginal when they went in, and they’ve only gotten worse with age and smoke. When Palo Alto sits under a smoke plume and homeowners run their Lennox systems on recirculation to keep PM2.5 out, the blower pulls return air through those same undersized, leaky flex runs. A video inspection usually finds crushed duct, a disconnected collar, or both, meaning the system has been pulling dusty crawlspace air into the supply stream the whole time. That’s not a cleaning problem, it’s a ductwork failure that a generic “duct cleaning” would miss entirely and a Lennox dealer wouldn’t catch unless they looked. We map, inspect, and video every run before we clean, because in south Palo Alto the ductwork is as often the problem as the dirt inside it. This is exactly what we document on our Palo Alto service area page, where we’ve mapped the housing patterns that shape how we work here.
Lennox Models & Products We Service in Palo Alto
We clean the air-distribution side of every Lennox line you’re likely to have in a Palo Alto home: Merit Series (14ACX, ML14XC1, EL180, ML180), Elite Series (XC21, XC25, SLP98V, EL296V), and the Dave Lennox Signature Collection (XC25, SL28XCV, SLP98V). We also service Lennox Healthy Climate filtration cabinets, HRV and ERV cores, and the ductwork attached to all of it. When something needs replacing, we use OEM Lennox parts for critical components like blower motors, control boards, and coil assemblies. For generic items like flex duct, mastic, and filter media, we use high-quality aftermarket equivalents that meet or exceed OEM spec, because paying the Lennox label premium for a length of flex isn’t honest. And we’ll give you a straight repair-versus-replace read on older equipment. A 20-year-old Lennox with a sound heat exchanger and coil is usually worth repairing; an Eichler-era flex system that’s been crushed and patched for decades may not be.
See the difference
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After
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Before
AfterLennox Service Pricing in Palo Alto
Lennox air duct cleaning in Palo Alto lands in the $450 – $850 range for a full single-system home. The spread comes down to how many supply runs you have, whether the return is accessible or buried in a south Palo Alto crawlspace, and how much blower wheel and coil cleaning the system needs after fire season. Return duct cleaning, blower cleaning, and video inspection are included in our standard scope, not billed as add-ons. What drives cost up is access: some north Palo Alto homes have century-old framing that turns a two-hour return clean into a half-day job, and we won’t know until we see it. A free estimate includes a walkthrough and, when it makes sense, a look inside the return before we quote. If you want an exact number for your system, call (833) 620-7085 and we’ll give you a flat price per system before any work starts.
Serving Palo Alto, CA – Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the Palo Alto area and know this community well. Use the map below to see our service coverage – if you’re nearby, we can almost certainly help.
FAQs – Lennox Air Duct Cleaning in Palo Alto
If the noise is a rhythmic hum or thrum that changes with fan speed, it’s likely ash buildup on the variable-speed blower wheel, and yes, cleaning that wheel is exactly the fix. We remove the blower assembly, clean each blade with brush-contact Rotobrush heads, and reinstall with the wheel balanced and verified by video. If the noise is a high-pitched whine or a screech, it’s a motor bearing or control issue, and we’ll tell you that before we quote anything. Call (833) 620-7085 for an assessment, estimates are free.
They need mapping and video inspection first, and then cleaning that’s aware of how fragile original Eichler-era flex runs are. Crushed or disconnected ducts in those tight crawlspaces are common, and we’ve found blower wheels caked with ash in Eichlers where the homeowner assumed the system just needed a filter change. We repair flex runs when we find them damaged, so the clean actually lasts. If you’re in an Eichler or a 1950s – 60s south Palo Alto home with original Lennox ductwork, call (833) 620-7085 and ask for a video inspection.
Yes, we service the core, the media cabinet, and the surrounding plenum as part of a full system cleaning. In Palo Alto homes that run HRV/ERV systems during fire season, the core loads with fine ash quickly, and that restriction undermines the very filtration the homeowner installed the Healthy Climate system for. We clean the core without damaging the fragile exchange membranes, and we check media cabinet seals while we’re in there.
Check the blower wheel for ash buildup and the return duct for restriction. We responded to a 1962 Eichler on the 800 block of Wildwood Lane in south Palo Alto where a Lennox Elite SLP98V furnace was short-cycling after a summer of smoke. Video inspection found a crushed flex return in the crawlspace and a blower wheel caked with ash. Cleaning the wheel, repairing the flex run with a proper collar, and sealing the plenum restored airflow and stopped the short-cycling without touching the furnace controls. If your Lennox is doing the same, call (833) 620-7085 and we’ll inspect the air side before anyone recommends a control board.
Yes. Duct sealing is part of our repair scope, and in older Palo Alto homes with Lennox retrofits it’s often the difference between a cleaning that holds and one that’s undone by crawlspace air in a month. We use mastic and proper collars, not duct tape, and we’ll show you the before-and-after pressure readings when the job’s done. For an exact quote on sealing and cleaning together, call (833) 620-7085, all estimates are free.
Service Areas Near Palo Alto
We serve Palo Alto and the surrounding Peninsula communities, including Menlo Park, Los Altos, Woodside, and San Carlos. If your Lennox system is in one of those towns and you’re dealing with the same smoke-related duct and blower buildup, the same service applies. See our Lennox service in San Mateo and Lennox service in Menlo Park pages for location-specific details on those areas.
Book Your Lennox Service in Palo Alto Today
If your Lennox system hasn’t been cleaned since the last fire season, or if the ductwork in your Palo Alto home is original to the house and 40 years overdue for a look, call (833) 620-7085. We’ll schedule a walkthrough, quote a flat price per system, and show you what’s actually inside your ducts before and after. The duct doesn’t lie – whatever has been moving through your air system for the past decade is still in there until someone actually removes it.
Written by Neal Drummond, Owner at Air Duct Cleaning Palo Alto, serving Palo Alto and the Peninsula since his earliest days in the indoor air quality trade.