How to Keep Your Home's Ducts Clean

As you may know from experience, neglecting to clean a home's ducts can result in various health problems, such as dry cough, for those living in the home. Unfortunately, while you may know the importance of keeping your home's ducts clean, you may not know exactly how to go about doing this. Here are a few tips that will help you keep your indoor ducts clean.

Hire a Professional Company

The best way to keep your home's ducts clean is by hiring a contractor to clean them on a regular basis. A contractor will use a powerful negative air machine in order to suction dust out of the air ducts within your home. The hose of the average negative air machine can pull about 5,500 cubic feet of air each minute. Best of all, the negative air machine will capture all the debris so that it is not released into your home. Negative air machines can be used to clean the air ducts of gravity heaters, HVAC, and forced air systems.

Use a Vacuum Cleaner

If you don't have the money to hire a contractor to clean your air ducts on a regular basis, you should consider using a vacuum cleaner to keep them clean. While the vacuum cleaner certainly won't prove as effective as a negative air machine, it will make a difference in terms of the cleanliness of the air ducts. Use your vacuum cleaner's nozzle to remove all dust, particles, and fluff that has accumulated in the vent corridors of the air ducts. Unfortunately, this may be difficult if the air ducts happen to be high up, or if your vacuum cleaner is very heavy. If this happens to be the case, you should have someone hold the vacuum cleaner for you so that you can focus on using the nozzle to clean the air ducts well.

Use a Washcloth and Water

Once you've used a vacuum cleaner to clean the air ducts, there may still be debris and dust left. Therefore, you should consider using a washcloth or rag to wipe down the vent corridors of the air ducts. You should create a mix with warm water as well as detergent. Get a flashlight and check the air ducts for mold. If you find any mold, you will need to use vinegar or even mold killing solution to get rid of the mold.