Tips For Cleaning Your HVAC Air Ducts

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Heidi's HVAC Help, Ideas, Troubleshooting Tips and More

Hello, I am Heidi, and this is my blog devoted to HVAC issues, repair, troubleshooting, maintenance tips and more. Before you dive into my posts, let me introduce myself. I am a mum of three kids and married to an amazing husband. I used to work in the HVAC industry, but now I spend most of my time working as an editor from my house. I needed something that offered the flexibility of staying at home with my little ones, but I miss the hands-on nature of HVAC work. In this blog, I plan to post on a variety of HVAC related topics. If you have questions or concerns, I hope these posts help you.

Tips For Cleaning Your HVAC Air Ducts

5 April 2016
 Categories: , Blog

It is easy for the ducted systems within your home to be out of sight and out of mind, but just because you can't see them does not mean that they aren't filled with dust, dirt, and grime. Not only can the air ducts within your home be lowering the air quality within your space, but they can also be decreasing the overall efficiency of your HVAC system. This means that you need to make sure that all air ducts within your home are cleaned thoroughly following the most helpful tips designed to offer real results.

Grate Removal

When you are looking to clean your ducted systems, the first thing that you need to do is to remove the grates that cover your air ducts. Some of the covers on your vents might be removed by just lifting them out of place, but there are other grate covers that will need to be removed by unscrewing them. Once you have all of the covers removed, you can soak them using water and mild soap detergent to ensure that all dirt and grime is removed. You can let them soak in water while you are cleaning the air ducts to ensure that they are thoroughly sanitised.

Pick Up

Once you take off the covers from your air ducts, you might notice large objects that are visible. The large objects that you see within your ducted systems can be removed by hand. This means that you should put on a pair of heavy duty gloves and then remove all items from your ducted system that you can reach by hand. This can include all different types of debris that have somehow made its way down your ducted system over time. If you have children or pets within your home, the amount of debris in your ducted system will likely be increased.

Vacuum

Once you have removed all of the large debris by hand, you can then use the attachment on your vacuum cleaner to get the smaller debris like dirt and dust that is within your ducted system. Make sure that you put the hose of the attachment as far down into the air duct as it will reach and move it all around the surface of the ducted system. You can then use a damp cloth to remove the rest of the dirt for the portion of the air duct that you can reach. Once this is done, you can then dry the grate covers and then place them back over the air ducts within your home.