How do you clean heat ducts? I sanded down our hardwood floors, now the house gets dusty quickly. I think that in spite of sealing the ducts up, some sanding dust got in the duct work. We priced having them cleaned, but it was over $500.00. We have geothermal heat, which is cleaner than heating with fossil fuels. Our ducts in the basement are sealed, so we can't take them apart. I'm tired of dusting every 3 days.
I'm not an expert, but I, too, live in a dusty house. Definitely check and change your furnace filter, if necessary. A HEPA filter costs more, but works better.
If you can remove your heat duct covers at all, try this: cut a bit of cheesecloth (like gauze, only woven a little tighter) behind or under the duct cover. You'd want to use about two layers and change them about once a month. You'd be amazed how much dust these simple little things can filter out!
Last but not least, if you can, get as much dust and debris out of your cold-air duct as possible. I used to have a cannister-style vaccuum, and the day I cleaned out my cold-air duct with it (I literally stuck the extension tube down into the bottom of the duct,) I was amazed how much stuff came out of there! Yuck! Stretching a single layer of cheesecloth over the cold-air duct might help, too, and I don't think it will interfere with your furnace.
Well if you can't take them apart, and you don't want to pay, there's not much you can do with the ducts. Have you checked your filter? Many people never think to check that and it is a cause for poor air flow and reduced efficiency.
I wonder if there are filters that can go right behind the duct covers. I noticed too that the cold air duct in the hallway gets the dirtiest, not as bad as the heated ones. The cold one is for sucking the cooled air to be reheated and sending the heated air back through the other ones.
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