Natural gas barely exists in ZIP 20115, and about six in ten owner homes heat with electricity, usually a heat pump. A heat pump’s blower runs through the heating months as well as the cooling ones, so dust keeps collecting at the returns, the large grilles that feed air back to the equipment. When the camera goes in, the returns come first.
The village is a different job. Fauquier County’s plan for Marshall counts more than 60 buildings from between the World Wars, about 20 houses on Anderson Avenue from the 1920s to the mid 1940s, most of them story-and-a-half frame, and older I-houses on Main Street that stand two stories tall and one room deep. Nobody designed those around ductwork. When central air came, the runs usually went wherever they’d fit: up through closets, inside knee walls, over the attic joists. The camera photos cover those runs too.
North of Main Street the plan puts many houses in the 1960s through the 1990s, and the median owner home in 20115 dates to 1986. That era usually means a sheet-metal main trunk under the first floor, flex branches to the rooms and a single central return on each level. The heat pump may be its third; the ductwork is usually the original.
About eight homes in ten in the ZIP are detached, and on the big lots outside the service district a basement system plus a second one in the attic is often how it’s done. We photograph each system separately and price each on its own line. South of Main Street the plan notes townhouse enclaves around cul-de-sacs, where the air handler is usually tucked in a closet or up in the attic, with short runs. With the ducts, the dryer vent cleaning is $199.