Indoor Spelunking
For the past several weeks Howard has been suffering from allergy attacks. We finally figured out that his allergies were better during the night when the furnace wasn’t running and the worst hit just after the furnace came on in the mornings. Hot air isn’t usually allergenic, so we decided to blame the dust that the furnace blows back into our house. I resolved to pay for a duct cleaning. Then I called around and found out that there are $90 duct cleanings that I can duplicate with a home vacuum cleaner and there are $750 duct cleanings which get the whole system truly clean at the expense of my budget. I decided to try vacuuming everything out myself and to clean the filter really well to see if that would make a difference for Howard.
Many of our heating vents are in the floor. I had no idea that floor vents were such magnets for detritus. In fact I am now entertaining the theory that each vent is the home of a little gnome who hoards things. I’m not sure I can explain the quantities of junk in any other way. Each gnome had very definite preferences as to hoarding material. In my boy’s room I hauled 6 handfuls of crackers out of the vent along with random small toys. The girls room contained a comparable amount of beads and sunflower seeds. The vent nearest the front door had 78 cents in change and piles of sawdust. The vent in the corner of the living room had dead ants and cheerios. The vent in the kitchen was the most eclectic. It contained random food crumbs, crayons, a pencil, bits of paper, and a mousetrap.
Having cleared the vents, I tackled the air intakes. This is when I learned why $750 might just be worth it. The dust inside those intakes could have been measured with a ruler. I vaccumed out as much as I could reach. Patches was fascinated by this whole process. He hovered beside me holding the flashlight, helping remove and replace screws, and sometimes even vaccuum. He loved it, he wanted me to go find more vents and intakes to vacuum. I felt tired and grubby, but there was still the filter to clean.
Usually when I clean the filter I take it out on the front lawn and spray it off with a high power hose nozzle. This is January, the hose is full of ice. So I took the filter up to the bathtub. I decided to use soap and hot water because I remembered that much of the dust I vacuumed was kind of sticky. It was amazing how quickly the tub water got filthy. I kept swishing and soaping and emptying water and refilling and soaking. Finally the filter was almost back to it’s original blue color. I allowed it to dry and stuck it back in.
What have I learned from all this? That I should probably clean my vents more often. Also, spraying a filter off with the hose does not get it as clean as washing in hot soapy water. I sure hope that it all makes a difference for Howard’s allergies. he has been really miserable lately.