Furnace Duct Cleaning

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We had our furnace duct work cleaned yesterday.  That was definitely not a tightwad project, but I did learn a few things.

If you want to save money on the air quality in your home,

• Use good furnace filters and change them regularly and often.
• Seal up duct work if doing major renovations and don’t unseal until all the dust has been cleaned out of the house
• Dust and vacuum your house regularly, using high quality vacuum cleaner bags.

Some suggest that duct cleaning is not necessary unless you have mold or vermin in the ductwork, and others say that a good duct cleaning really reduces allergies.  This may depend on whether you hire a good or a bad duct cleaner (see also the comment section in the previous link).  In fact, bad duct cleaners can apparently even make the air quality in your house worse. 

The rule we went by was this:  if the house smells when you turn on the furnace or air conditioner, get the ducts cleaned.   Others say: if you open the cold air return grill and see a lot of junk, get the ducts cleaned.

All in all, duct cleaning is a big deal. It costs a lot of money.  It takes a lot of work—we had to move bookshelves and hundreds of books.  And it removes a lot of junk—in our case the construction debris of more than a decade ago, before we even lived in this city!

We’re hoping that the duct cleaning will greatly improve the quality of our air in the winter months when we spend most of our time indoors.

To protect our investment, we’ll vacuum the ground-level cold air returns weekly and the high ones monthly.  My husband will continue to use good quality furnace filters and to change them regularly.  And I’ll make sure the vacuum cleaner bag is changed often enough.

Once again, it seems that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. 

See you Thursday for another Tea Time with Annie Kate.