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.
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AfterFast, Reliable Air Duct Cleaning Across San Anselmo
Air duct cleaning in San Anselmo typically costs $450 – $850 for a full residential system, with most single-family homes landing around $550 – $700. You’ll get a written price before we touch a single vent, and that number won’t change when the technician arrives. If you’ve noticed dust settling on furniture within days of wiping it down, or one room that never seems to hold temperature, your ducts are worth a look. Call us at (737) 727-2314 and we’ll walk you through what a cleaning actually involves, what it should cost, and whether your system even needs it.
Why Cardinal Air Duct Cleaning Is San Anselmo’s Preferred Air Duct Cleaning Company
We didn’t build a reputation in San Anselmo by running cheap coupons and upselling at the door. The model is simple: one flat price per system, agreed in writing before work begins, backed by our 365-Day Done Right Promise. If the work isn’t right within a full year, we come back and correct it at no charge. That applies to every job in San Anselmo, without exception. No fine print, no “well, technically that’s a different service.”
Omar Haddad leads our team, and every technician who arrives at a San Anselmo home is background-checked, uniformed, and named in advance. You’ll know who’s walking up your driveway before they ring the bell. The equipment we carry isn’t a truck-mounted shop vac with a marketing budget. We run Rotobrush rotary brush systems for agitation, Nikro HEPA-filtered negative pressure units for extraction, and Abatement Technologies containment where needed, so loosened debris goes into the vacuum. It doesn’t drift back into your living room.
Part of the Relay Home Co. family, founded 2005, Cardinal Air Duct Cleaning operates under The Relay Standard: every booking includes a live trackable arrival window, before-and-after photo documentation, and a digital invoice you can pay from your phone. Calls are answered by a live person 24/7. No voicemail loops, no phone tag.
Residential Air Duct Cleaning in San Anselmo
Residential Air Duct Cleaning in San Anselmo means more than running a brush through vent registers. It means addressing the whole path air travels: supply ducts, return ducts, the air handler, and the blower motor. In older San Anselmo homes, that path often runs through crawlspaces and attics where joints have loosened over decades. A disconnected return duct doesn’t just leak conditioned air. It actively pulls dust, lint, and attic insulation straight into the system, bypassing your filter entirely.
A typical single-family home in San Anselmo runs $450 – $850 for a full system cleaning. That’s the range, and we give you the exact figure in writing after we assess your system. What moves the number? Square footage, number of returns, accessibility of the ductwork, and whether the air handler and blower need cleaning too. We don’t price per vent. A 12-vent house and a 16-vent house often cost the same, because the real work is in the trunk lines and the air handler, not the final few feet of flex duct.
Supply and Return Duct Cleaning
Supply ducts push conditioned air into your rooms. Return ducts pull air back to the system. Both need attention. In San Anselmo, returns often run through unconditioned crawlspaces, where gaps and disconnections let outside air bypass the filter. We clean both paths and inspect for leaks, because cleaning a system with an open joint is like mopping while the roof leaks.
Full System Cleaning and Video Inspection
A full system cleaning in San Anselmo includes the ductwork, the air handler, the blower wheel, and the plenums. We also offer video inspection so you can see the before and after with your own eyes. Before-and-after photos aren’t an add-on. They’re part of every job, because you shouldn’t have to take our word for it.
Commercial Air Duct Cleaning in San Anselmo
Commercial Air Duct Cleaning in San Anselmo covers offices, retail spaces, restaurants, and small medical suites throughout the downtown corridor and the commercial strips off Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. These spaces often share one HVAC system across multiple rooms, which means dust and debris circulate farther and faster than in a house. A restaurant kitchen exhaust path pulling cooking residue into the same ductwork as dining room returns is a different job than a three-bedroom bungalow.
Commercial pricing depends on system size, number of rooftop or split units, and whether the job runs after business hours. A small office suite in San Anselmo typically runs $600 – $1,200; a larger retail space or restaurant with multiple units runs higher. We provide a written quote before work begins, and the 365-Day Done Right Promise applies to commercial jobs exactly as it does residential. No carve-outs.
Restaurant and Retail Systems
Grease, flour dust, and high foot traffic make restaurant ductwork load up quickly. We coordinate cleaning around your hours so we’re not running equipment while you’re serving lunch. Retail spaces with high turnover in dressing rooms and stockrooms also pull lint and cardboard dust into the system faster than most owners expect.
Office and Medical Suite Systems
Offices with open floor plans share air across every desk. If one person’s allergies flare every afternoon and your filter’s clean, the ducts are usually the next thing to check. Medical suites have higher stakes: cleaner air means fewer complaints from staff and patients. We document everything, and you get photos of the duct walls before and after.
Trusted Brands We Service in San Anselmo
We clean and maintain systems built around equipment from Honeywell, Aprilaire, and other major manufacturers. When a San Anselmo home has an Aprilaire media filter housing or a Honeywell electronic air cleaner, we inspect that component as part of the full system cleaning. We stock common replacement filters and gasket material for these brands, so a simple part swap doesn’t turn into a two-week wait. If your system uses a brand we haven’t mentioned, ask. If it moves air, we service it.
Common Air Duct Cleaning Problems We See in San Anselmo Homes
San Anselmo’s older housing stock and wooded lots create a specific set of issues. Here’s what shows up most often:
- Disconnected or unsealed duct joints in crawlspaces. Many homes built between the 1920s and 1950s still have original sheet metal ductwork. Joints separate over time, and the system pulls attic and crawlspace air in. Cleaning without sealing just recontaminates the system within weeks.
- Oak pollen and fine organic debris packed into return trunks. The town’s oak canopy is beautiful, but it loads return ducts with pollen that behaves differently than drywall dust. It’s sticky, it clings to duct walls, and it cycles back into bedrooms when the blower kicks on.
- Lint from wall cavities and attics bypassing the filter. Gaps around register boots and return chases let lint and insulation bypass the filter entirely. The filter looks clean because the air never went through it. That’s a big one in older San Anselmo homes.
- Filter bypass in retrofitted systems. A house with a furnace added in the 1980s or 1990s often has a filter slot that doesn’t fit the duct dimensions properly. Air slips around the filter. We check filter fit as part of every full system clean.
Pricing for Air Duct Cleaning in San Anselmo, CA
A full residential air duct cleaning in San Anselmo runs $450 – $850. Small condos and single-bedroom units fall on the lower end. Larger homes with multiple returns, or systems where the air handler and blower need heavy cleaning, land higher. Commercial spaces range from $600 – $1,200 for small suites and go up from there for restaurants and multi-unit spaces.
We quote one flat price per system. Not per vent. Not a low teaser price that becomes an invoice twice as large once the tech walks the site. The written quote you get before work starts is the price you pay. If we find something unexpected mid-job, like a disconnected joint we can seal in ten minutes, we handle it and document it in the photos. We don’t stop the job and renegotiate. Call (737) 727-2314 for an exact quote. Estimates are free.
We Also Serve Cities Near San Anselmo
Our crews cover San Anselmo and the surrounding communities, including Fairfax, Kentfield, San Rafael, and Larkspur. If you’re in any of these towns, you get the same pricing structure, the same equipment, and the same 365-Day Done Right Promise. For more on what we do, see our full Air Duct Cleaning service page.
Serving San Anselmo, CA - Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the San Anselmo 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 About Air Duct Cleaning in San Anselmo
Most San Anselmo homes need air duct cleaning every 3 to 5 years. If you have pets, live on a heavily wooded lot with oak pollen, or recently completed a remodel, you may need it sooner. A house with a sealed, clean system and good filtration might go longer. We’ll tell you if your ducts don’t need cleaning yet. We’d rather earn your trust than sell you a service you don’t need. Call (737) 727-2314 for an honest assessment.
Per system. Always. Per-vent pricing sounds cheaper up front, but it ignores the air handler and blower motor, which is where the actual debris source often lives. We quote one flat price for the full system and put it in writing before work starts. That price does not change at the door. Call (737) 727-2314 for a written quote.
We use a Rotobrush rotary brush to agitate debris off the duct walls, then a Nikro HEPA-filtered negative pressure unit to pull it out. Negative pressure means the loosened debris goes straight into the vacuum, not back into your living room. We clean the supply ducts, return ducts, the air handler, and the blower. You get before-and-after photos of your actual ducts. Not stock photos from another job.
We schedule by appointment, and we don’t promise same-day service. Duct cleaning is a scheduled job, and a proper cleaning takes three to six hours depending on the system. What we do promise is a live trackable arrival window through The Relay Standard, so you know exactly when we’ll be there. Call (737) 727-2314 and we’ll find the soonest open slot that fits your schedule.
It changes a lot. Homes from the 1940s in San Anselmo often have original ductwork, or a retrofit system installed decades later, and neither was built to modern sealing standards. We frequently find disconnected joints in crawlspaces and unsealed return chases pulling attic air. Cleaning is still the same process, but we inspect for leaks as part of the job, because in a house this age, cleaning without sealing just recontaminates the system. We can show you photos of every joint we find, so you know exactly what’s happening under your floors. Call (737) 727-2314 with any questions about older systems.
What a Flat-Price Duct Cleaning Actually Looks Like in San Anselmo
Here’s the thing about duct cleaning in San Anselmo: an honest job has a clear process and a clear price. We walk the system, measure what’s there, and hand you a written quote. One number, per system, agreed before we start. We run professional-grade equipment, not a rented shop vac with a rotating brush attachment. We document the work with before-and-after photos of your own ducts, because you shouldn’t have to trust a stranger’s word. And if it’s not done right within 365 days, we return and fix it at no charge.
This matters more in San Anselmo than in newer subdivisions, because the housing stock here is older and the lots are wooded. Ductwork in a 1940s bungalow off Sorich Avenue behaves differently than ductwork in a 2010s build. It leaks. It pulls attic air. It collects oak pollen that clings to the walls. We recently cleaned the supply and return ducts in a 1940s bungalow off Sorich Avenue, where the homeowner had been sneezing every morning. The Rotobrush agitation and Nikro negative pressure pulled a surprising amount of oak pollen and lint from the return trunk, and we sealed a disconnected joint near the air handler that was pulling attic air. After the job, our photos showed the duct walls free of the gray film that had been blowing into the bedrooms, and the homeowner stopped waking up congested.
That’s what we mean by evidence, not a sales pitch. You get the photos, you get the written guarantee, and you get a price that doesn’t shift once the van is in your driveway. If you’re in San Anselmo and you’re wondering whether your ducts actually need cleaning, call (737) 727-2314. We’ll tell you the truth, and if you need us, we’ll do the job right.
Written by Omar Haddad, Owner at Cardinal Air Duct Cleaning, serving San Anselmo and surrounding Marin County communities.