Dirty Return Vents May be Affecting Your Furnace's Efficiency

Clogged air vents and filter are the leading cause of furnace problems. Dust and debris in the vents, ducts, and filters inhibit airflow throughout the home. The furnace has to work harder to maintain a warm and safe environment during the Minnesota winters.

Dust Doctors can clean the vents and air ducts in your home to keep the furnace from wearing out prematurely. We offer professional cleaning for all residential properties in the Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota area.

The Effects of Return Vents in Your Home

Although the air filter in the furnace traps much of the dirt circulating throughout a house, it doesn’t catch all the dust. Whatever particles pass through the furnace contaminate can clog the air ducts and collect on the vents.

The return vent contaminates the air and pushes it right back out into the house. The air floats around until returns through the filter and into the furnace once again. This cycle repeats every day. Every time the air circles back around it gets dirtier.

A clogged furnace will produce limited airflow. This leads to other issues. In addition to high energy bills, the reduced airflow can cause the heat exchanger in the furnace to overheat. Once the exchanger overheats, it may shut down too soon and create a colder environment during the Minnesota winters.

You may need to call a Dust Doctors technician to perform an HVAC cleaning.

Furnace Efficiency

There are other ways that a dirty return vent can affect a furnace’s efficiency:

Overworked Air Fan. As the fan recirculates the polluted air through the house time and again, the HVAC fan has to work twice as hard to draw air through the home. It can use up to 15% more energy to accomplish this task.

Frozen Evaporator Coils. You may have opened up the HVAC unit cover and discovered a thick layer of ice across the coil. If the air cannot pass through the coil efficiently, it is unable to dry the condensation that forms. The condensation turns to ice during the cooling process.

Poor Heating/Cooling. When dirt and dust clog the system, it cannot efficiently heat or cool your home. You may turn the heat up or the AC down, but it won’t do any good. When the vents are spewing dust and dirt into the air, it will collect somewhere in the HVAC unit; thus, drastically reduced air flow.

System Failure. When all the components in the HVAC unit have to work twice as hard to heat or cool a home, something will break down faster than it should. The result could be hundreds of dollars in repair or thousands of dollars in system replacement.

Professional Return Vent Cleaning Service

Dust Doctors offers professional return vent cleaning services for your home. A clean system will operate more efficiently and keep your energy bills and repairs low. We provide HVAC cleaning, duct cleaning, and vent cleaning for residential properties across Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.

To schedule a cleaning, call us today at 651-319-9777, or you can message us on our contact page.