New home checklist: the air, ducts, and vents

The one advantage you have right now

There is a short window between closing on a house and moving into it when the place is completely empty, and it is the best time you will ever have to deal with the air side of the home. Clear access to the air handler, the laundry, and the bathrooms, nothing to move, and no one living around the work. Once the furniture arrives, every one of these jobs gets slower and more disruptive. So the first item on the checklist is really about timing: if you can, handle this before you move in.

The rest of the list is about what is actually worth doing, because a house you did not live in comes with an unknown history, and the goal is to resolve that history honestly, not to buy every service on the menu.

Air ducts: only with a reason

Start here, because this is the one people most often overpay on. The EPA’s guidance is to clean ducts as needed, not on a schedule, and a new-to-you house does not automatically qualify. The reasons that do apply to a house you just bought are specific: a previous owner who smoked, visible mold in the system, evidence of rodents or insects, or a remodel that ran with the HVAC on and pushed dust through everything.

If one of those is true, cleaning once and getting a documented baseline makes sense, and our air duct cleaning is $449 for one system. If none of them is true and the house was simply lived in, you can likely leave the ducts alone. A good company will tell you that at the door rather than talk you into it.

Dryer vent: almost always worth it once

The dryer vent is the opposite case. Here the answer is usually yes, do it, and the reasons are different from the ducts. It is a safety item, its condition is completely hidden inside walls or the roof, and you have no way of knowing whether it was ever cleaned. A previous owner who never touched it is common, and a long roof run in a Valley home can hide a lot.

A standard cleaning is $129 and includes an airflow test before and after, so you begin your ownership with a known, measured baseline instead of a question mark. It is also when we catch the surprises — a disconnected run, a crushed transition hose, or a bird nest at the termination.

Bathroom exhaust fans: cheap, easy, and overlooked

Bathroom fans fail quietly. Years of dust cake the blade and housing until the fan spins but barely moves air, and nothing about it looks wrong. In an occupied house they are a nuisance to get to; in an empty one they take minutes. At $39 each, cleaning them while the bathrooms are empty is one of the easier wins on this list.

The rest of the walk-through

While you are thinking about the air side, a few things are worth a look even if they are not our department:

• Air filters. Find every return and put in fresh filters. You do not know when they were last changed.
• Registers and returns. A quick look for obvious dust blowing out when the system runs, which is one of the real signs ducts might warrant cleaning.
• The dryer connection. Make sure the dryer is actually connected to the vent and the transition hose is not crushed behind it.
• Exterior vents. Walk the outside and find the dryer termination and any exhaust caps. A propped-open flap or visible nesting material tells you something before you ever run the appliance.

The efficient way to do it

If your walk-through turns up the common trio — you want the ducts done for a real reason, the dryer vent handled, and the bath fans cleaned — the Move-in Fresh Start package bundles exactly those for $599, which is $57 less than booking them one at a time. If you only need one or two, book those on their own. The bundle is a deal when you needed the parts anyway, and no deal at all when you are buying services the house does not need. That distinction is the whole point of this checklist: do what the house actually calls for, in the one week it is easiest to do it, and keep the rest of your money.