Tips For Maintaining Clean Air Ducts

As the name implies, air moves through your home's air ducts, as does anything that air happens to be carrying with it. This might meant that, from time to time, moisture, mold spores, pet dander, and other undesirable things enter your home and affect your air quality.

While you can't keep your air perfectly clean all the time, you can keep it cleaner by choosing to clean your air ducts on a regular basis. A combination of on-your-own care and cleaning and professional cleaning can add up to cleaner air ducts and cleaner air too.

Change Your Filters Regularly

To begin with, make sure that you are changing your filters regularly. How often you'll need to change them depends on a wide range of factors, such as which type of filters you use, how old your heating and cooling system is, and even whether you have pets or not.

Your best bet is to consult with a professional HVAC service. They can look at your system and provide you with a basic schedule for cleaning and for how often you need to change your filters. You can even have them change the filters for you if you like. Plus, they can advise you on the best filters for your home.

Whether you do it yourself or hire a company to do it, changing your air filters often can lead to cleaner air ducts.

Clean The Grates

While professionals can clean inside your air ducts and can get at the components of your cooling system, you can do your part too. For example, you can and should clean off the grates of your air duct system.

You can do this with a simple cleaning brush. If necessary, it's fine to use soap and water as well. Getting all that dust and grime off of your grates will keep those yucky particles from entering the air you breathe.

Vacuum Regularly

Believe it or not, regular vacuuming can also help to keep your air ducts clean in between professional cleanings.

All homes have dust and dirt. Some also have pet dander and other allergens floating around.

When you vacuum these things up and throw away that vacuum bag or empty the canister, you keep them from entering your air ducts and affecting your air quality.

There is no substitute for regular air duct cleaning and general maintenance of your heating and cooling system. With that said, however, there's certainly no harm in also doing your part to keep your air ducts clean.