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.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
AfterFast, Reliable Air Duct Cleaning Across Chinatown
Air duct cleaning in Chinatown, CA typically runs $450-$850 for a full residential system, and the job usually takes one full day when grease pretreatment is required. That last part matters here more than in almost any other LA neighborhood. Chinatown’s ground-floor commercial kitchens share building envelopes with upstairs residences, which means supply and return ducts routinely accumulate aerosolized wok grease, five-spice particulate, and charcoal smoke that standard brush-and-vacuum cleaning cannot remove on its own. We’ve worked these blocks long enough to know exactly what’s inside the ductwork before we open the first panel. Call (806) 606-6902 for a written price before any work starts, every time, no exceptions.
Why CleanRun Air Duct Cleaning Is Chinatown’s Preferred Air Duct Cleaning Company
We are not the cheapest duct cleaning outfit in Chinatown, and we don’t want to be. We’re the crew that shows you what’s inside your ducts before we touch them, gives you a written price while standing in your living room, and photographs every duct run before and after the work. That has been our standard since Tomas Reyes founded the company in 2013, and it’s why homeowners in this neighborhood keep our number.
Chinatown presents a set of problems that suburban duct cleaners never see. The housing stock here dates largely from the late 1930s through the 1960s, the “New Chinatown” era: low-rise mixed-use structures where a BBQ house on the ground floor shares its building envelope with apartments above. Supply and return ducts cross through chases that were never properly isolated from kitchen exhaust pathways. Cross-contamination is not a possibility; it’s the default. Our Air Duct Cleaning team pre-scopes every Chinatown job with a camera inspection, because the duct layout in these buildings rarely matches any plan on file.
If you live within a block of the main restaurant corridor along Broadway or Hill Street, your ducts are almost certainly carrying grease from somewhere you didn’t invite. That’s just how these buildings were built. We plan for it before we arrive.
Every CleanRun technician is background-checked, uniformed, and identified by name before arrival. Every job concludes with a Documented Photo Record of every duct run. Every price is written before work begins, in line with Haven Standard Clause 1. Our office in Los Angeles coordinates dispatch for all Chinatown jobs, and scheduling takes into account the parking and equipment-access realities of these streets, not just the time on the clock.
Our Air Duct Cleaning Services in Chinatown
Residential Duct Cleaning
Most residential jobs in Chinatown are in mixed-use buildings, which means the scope is different from a single-family home in the Valley. We inspect the full system first, including the plenum (the central box where supply air collects before it’s distributed through the registers), because grease and soot settle there before they migrate anywhere else. A full residential cleaning here typically runs $450-$750, including the citrus-degreaser pretreatment that most Chinatown buildings require. We work around your building’s schedule, not the other way around.
Commercial Duct Cleaning
Chinatown’s commercial kitchens produce grease loads that would overwhelm a residential duct system in weeks. Our commercial offering covers restaurant duct runs, retail storefronts along Broadway and Spring Street, and the shared plenum spaces that serve multiple units. We coordinate with building management and restaurant operators to sequence the work so that a dim sum parlor’s lunch service doesn’t grind to a halt because we’re breaking down equipment in the rear corridor. Commercial pricing in Chinatown ranges from $1,200 to $4,000 depending on square footage and grease saturation.
Supply Duct Cleaning
Supply ducts carry conditioned air from your HVAC unit to each room’s register. In Chinatown, these are the ducts most often contaminated by cooking vapors drawn in from neighboring spaces and redistributed through your living area. We clean supply runs with negative-pressure extraction (a vacuum pulling air backward through the duct while we agitate the walls with rotary brushes), so what we remove leaves the building instead of circulating back into your apartment. Supply-only cleaning in a Chinatown condo typically runs $250-$450.
Return Duct Cleaning
Return ducts pull air from your rooms back to the HVAC unit, which means they’re the first place dust, pet hair, and freeway particulate collect. In buildings along the 110 corridor, return runs accumulate a fine black grit that’s mostly tire-rubber dust and diesel particulate. Cleaning return ducts properly means treating them as a complete path from register to air handler, not just vacuuming the first few feet. Return-side cleaning in Chinatown typically runs $200-$400, and we photo-document the path before and after so you can see exactly what the camera saw.
Full System Cleaning
A full system clean is what most Chinatown homes actually need. It includes the supply and return sides, the plenum, the blower compartment, and the registers. In mixed-use buildings, we also inspect the chase penetrations (where ducts pass between floors) for gaps that let restaurant exhaust seep upward. If we find gaps, we document them and recommend a $95-$180 sealing repair, which we’ll put in writing before we do it. Full system cleaning for a typical two-bedroom Chinatown apartment runs $500-$850, depending on system length and how long it’s been since the last service.
What happens when you call
- 1
A real person answersNo phone trees - you reach a local pro.
- 2
You get an upfront price rangeHonest numbers before anyone is dispatched.
- 3
A background-checked tech heads outLicensed & insured, dispatched right away.
- 4
You approve before work beginsNothing starts until you say go.
BeforeAfterTrusted Brands We Service in Chinatown
Every CleanRun truck carries professional-grade equipment from Rotobrush and Nikro, and our air-quality testing and sanitizing work uses Honeywell and Aprilaire products. These are trade-recognized names that any homeowner can research independently before agreeing to a price. For the greasy systems we see above Chinatown restaurants, we rely on a citrus-degreaser pretreatment applied with low-pressure sprayers before any agitation begins. Then we use negative pressure with HEPA filtration, per NADCA standards, to pull dislodged material out of the building entirely. You’ll see the equipment in the photos we hand you at the end of the job. That’s the point: what we say we used, you can see we used.
Common Air Duct Cleaning Problems We See in Chinatown Homes
- Wok-grease film on flex duct above restaurants. On North Spring Street above a roast duck shop, our crew pulled flex duct sections coated in a sticky amber-yellow grease film that had migrated upward through an unsealed chase. Following NADCA standards, we applied a citrus degreaser as a pretreatment, then used negative pressure with HEPA filtration and agitation tools to complete source removal without redistributing the grease. The building’s shared return ducts tested clear on a follow-up camera inspection, and the upstairs condo owner reported no more cooking odors bleeding into the bedroom.
- Freeway soot accumulation on the 110 corridor. Chinatown sits hard against the 110 Freeway, one of the oldest and most congested freeways in Southern California. Building air intakes pull chronic diesel particulate and tire-rubber dust, and LA Basin temperature inversions trap that pollution at street level. Duct systems here accumulate fine-particle loads faster than most LA neighborhoods.
- Cross-contamination in shared plenum spaces. In buildings where a ground-floor restaurant shares return air with upstairs apartments, standard brush-and-vacuum cleaning smears grease across duct walls rather than removing it. That reduces airflow and leaves odor sources intact. The job isn’t done unless the entire stack is addressed.
- Shared dryer vent stacks backing up. Many older Chinatown apartment buildings route dryer vents through a single stack serving multiple units. Lint from every unit accumulates in that shared run, and a single uncleaned stack can backdraft moist, lint-laden air into adjacent apartments. Full-building coordination is sometimes the only real fix.
Pricing for Air Duct Cleaning in Chinatown, CA
Here are the numbers we give Chinatown customers in writing, before any work starts. A standard one-bedroom apartment in a mixed-use building typically runs $400-$600 for a full system clean with grease pretreatment. A two-bedroom runs $500-$850. Three bedrooms or larger: $750-$1,200. If your building has a shared plenum that needs addressing for the whole stack, we’ll quote that as a separate line item so you know exactly what’s yours and what’s the building’s. Commercial spaces run $1,200-$4,000 depending on grease load and square footage. We do not do per-vent pricing. One written price for the entire system, agreed to before the van unloads. That’s Haven Standard Clause 1, and it’s not negotiable for us or for you.
If you have a written estimate from another company, bring it. We’ll put our number next to it in writing at no cost. If we can’t beat the scope at a fair price, we’ll tell you so. Call (806) 606-6902 for a free estimate on air duct cleaning in Chinatown.
We Also Serve Cities Near Chinatown
Chinatown is our home base for this page, but the same CleanRun crews also cover Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco. If you live in a neighboring area with mixed-use buildings or freeway-adjacent air intakes, the same documented process applies. Call (806) 606-6902 to get a written price.
Serving Chinatown, CA - Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the Chinatown 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 - Air Duct Cleaning in Chinatown
Because the aerosolized grease from ground-floor commercial kitchens settles inside duct walls as a sticky film that standard brush agitation just smears around. A citrus-degreaser pretreatment breaks that film down so the negative-pressure extraction can actually pull it out. In Chinatown, skipping this step means the ducts look barely touched after the job, and cooking odors return within weeks. We include the degreasing step in our base price for any job within a block of the main restaurant corridor. Call (806) 606-6902 and tell us your cross street; we’ll tell you whether you’re in the grease zone.
Yes. We coordinate direct with building management and restaurant operators, and we typically work during off-peak hours or on days the kitchen is closed. The duct runs serving the upstairs apartments are usually separate from the restaurant’s exhaust system, though they often share chases and plenum space, which is precisely why cross-contamination happens. We map the building first, identify which runs serve which spaces, and isolate our negative-pressure equipment so we’re only pulling from the residential side. No ladders through the dining room, no hoses across the kitchen floor during service.
If your building sits within a few blocks of the 110 Freeway, we recommend every 2 to 3 years instead of the standard 3 to 5. The combination of diesel particulate, tire-rubber dust, and temperature inversions that trap pollution at street level means your registers are pulling in a heavier fine-particle load than apartments even a mile north in Echo Park. You’ll see it in the camera photos before we clean: a fine black film on the return side that wipes off on your fingers like soot. It builds up faster than most people expect.
Often, yes. If you live in an older low-rise building from the 1940s or 1950s, your dryer might exhaust into a shared stack that serves every unit above and below you. Cleaning just your segment doesn’t remove the lint plug three floors down, and that plug can backdraft into your apartment through the shared run. We’ll camera the stack first, show you what we see, and if full-building coordination is needed, we’ll put a written recommendation together for your HOA or property manager. We’ve done this enough in Chinatown to know which buildings have the problem before we even open the wall.
We use Rotobrush agitation systems and Nikro negative-air machines with HEPA filtration, and our air-quality and sanitizing treatments use Honeywell and Aprilaire products. For the grease loads we see above restaurant kitchens, the critical piece is the pretreatment: a citrus degreaser applied with low-pressure sprayers before any agitation begins. Then the Nikro unit runs negative pressure on the entire run while we work, so the dislodged grease and particulate exit the building instead of recirculating. You’ll see the equipment in your Documented Photo Record. If another company shows up with a shop vac and a drill brush, the price should be zero, because that’s not duct cleaning.
Written by Tomas Reyes, Owner at CleanRun Air Duct Cleaning, serving Chinatown since 2013.