Duct, Dryer Vent and Chimney Work in the Town of Clinton, NJ
The Town of Clinton sits on the South Branch of the Raritan in Hunterdon County, under a square mile and a half of mills, Main Street storefronts and houses of every era since the 1800s. This page covers the town; Clinton Township has its own.
Clinton Township borders the town, High Bridge sits a few miles up the river, and Route 31 north leads into Lebanon Township, all in Hunterdon County. Clinton took its name from DeWitt Clinton when its post office opened in 1829, became a town in 1865 out of parts of three townships and stood fully on its own from 1895. It counted 2,773 residents in the 2020 census. Much of the town lies inside the Clinton Historic District, added to the National Register in 1995 with 270 contributing buildings in Federal, Greek Revival and Italianate styles among others, and the Red Mill and Dunham's Mill still face each other across the dam.
Census estimates date about one home in five to before 1940 and another one in five to the 1990s, and only about half the town's homes are detached houses; the rest are two-families, townhouses and apartment buildings. Gas heats most of them, and fuel oil is still common. On the historic streets that means masonry chimneys and retrofit ductwork; in a two-family it means two dryer runs sharing one wall.
Main Street, the mills and the historic streets
The Great Fire of 1891 destroyed 23 buildings and 17 businesses on Main Street, and the Duckworth Building and Odd Fellows Hall went back up in brick. The houses on Leigh, Halstead and the Main Street blocks mostly predate forced air, so their ducts were added through closets and floor cavities, with returns wherever a grille would fit. Air Duct Cleaning in those houses begins with finding every branch, including the ones behind finished basement ceilings.
A retrofit system often starves the upper floor. Where one hallway grille returns air for two stories, a second return on the upper floor is Air Duct Installation work, and Air Duct Repair seals the joints and refastens boots that have dropped away from the floor.
Radon, basements and the return side
In 1988 The New York Times described Clinton as a town that had conquered the worst residential radon hotspot known in the United States, traced to uranium in the limestone under sections of town and handled with ventilation systems in the affected homes. If your basement carries a mitigation pipe and fan, we work around it and leave the pipe, the fan and any sealed sump lid as we found them.
The county health department's guide says unsafe radon levels come mainly from gas seeping in through basement entry points, and a duct cleaning does nothing to change that; testing and mitigation belong to a radon company. Sealing return joints that draw basement air into the system is Air Duct Repair work, worth doing for comfort and dust, but it is not radon mitigation. If a damp basement has grown something on the coil or the nearby duct, Mold Treatment and Removal deals with it there, and HVAC UV Light Installation puts a lamp on the coil for the months between cleanings.
Two-families, apartments and shared walls
About one home in ten here is a two-family house, and each unit usually has a dryer and a vent run of its own, often ending a few feet apart on the same side wall. Dryer Vent Cleaning starts by pairing each hood with its machine, then clears each run to the outside. A vent that crosses a basement ceiling in foil, or climbs a wall cavity with a sag in it, is rebuilt in rigid metal under Dryer Vent Installation.
In the small apartment buildings and townhouses the owner or manager usually arranges one visit for every unit, and tenants only need to clear the laundry area.
Brick chimneys and oil heat on the older streets
The houses that still burn oil vent through a masonry flue whose base fills with soot and flakes of scale, and the cleanout door at the bottom of the chimney tells a lot. Chimney Cleaning sweeps the flue and empties the base. When the tiles have cracked, the crown has opened or the cap has rusted through, that is Chimney Repair. A fireplace that sees a few fires each winter still builds creosote and still gets its sweep before the season.
A visit in the Town of Clinton
Driveways are short on the old streets, so we plan parking before the day and carry the hose through the nearest basement door. We open the air handler first, since the filter slot and the blower tell us what the branches will hold, and work outward from there. AMG, licensed and insured and veteran owned, answers the phone 8 AM to 8 PM, 7 days a week.
Visits in Clinton Township, the town's larger neighbor, run the same way, and so do the ones in High Bridge.
Our services in Clinton
Nearby areas we serve
Questions and answers
Our basement has a radon system. Will a duct cleaning affect it?
No. The mitigation system draws from under the slab or a sealed sump and vents outside through its own pipe and fan, apart from the ductwork. We leave the pipe, the fan and any sealed lid untouched. A duct cleaning does not lower radon, so keep testing the way your installer advised.
Is this page for the Town of Clinton or Clinton Township?
The Town of Clinton, the small town around Main Street and the two mills on the South Branch. Clinton Township, which takes in Annandale, Round Valley and much more land, has a page of its own. We serve both.
Two dryers vent out the same side of our two-family. How do you tell them apart?
We run each dryer in turn and watch which hood opens, then trace each run back through the basement. Both runs get cleaned to the outside, and if the hoods sit too close together or one flap is stuck, we tell you what should change.
How soon can you come to Clinton?
Call (848) 220-1635 and we will offer the nearest open times. Tell us whether the house is a single-family or a two-family, and whether the chimney still serves an oil burner or a fireplace.
Serving Clinton, New Jersey
Free estimates in Clinton, 8 AM to 8 PM, 7 days a week.