Dear Suzy,
My mom recently had her air conditioning duct work cleaned professionally
at a cost of about 33 million dollars. The 25 years of accumulated household
gunk they swept out was amazing. Once I got home to my little rental pad, it
got me thinking — and sneezing. I can’t afford the professionals and I’m sure
my landlord isn’t going to fork over the cash to have this done. What are my
options? Trained guinea pigs? — Jeanine S.
Dear Jeanine,
My parents gave me a microscope when I was ten. I looked at the Lincoln
Memorial on the back of a penny and saw old Abe himself sitting there, covered
in gunk and mold, and I thought, “Geez, I put this stuff in my mouth all the
time. Think I’ll stop.” I looked at a drop of water from Galveston Bay and saw
zillions of wiggly critters, and I thought, “Whoa, I swim in this. These things
could go right up my nose. Think I’ll stop.” Then I took a close look at a flea
and saw little bugs crawling all over the flea’s legs, and I thought, “I
don’t want to know about this. Let’s let this hidden world remain hidden. Maybe
I can trade in this peephole-into-horror for a nice, plastic horse.”
Despite the fact I’ve steered clear of microscopes most my life, some yahoo
continues to bombard me with electron microscope images of dust mites and even
tiny bugs that live in the sockets of your eye lashes magnified 480 times.
So just imagining all the pounds of skin flakes (we shed a few pounds a week!)
and cooties that must get sucked into a central air conditioning system makes
me itch all over. Bill, at Deep Eddy Air Duct Cleaning, calmed me down a bit
when he told me the main debris cleaned from air ducts is just dust, although
one urban duct cleaning myth tells of a duct cleaner who emptied out his big
vacuum machine when he got back to the shop and discovered ten thousand dollars
in cash someone had stashed in the duct work. Bill, however, says more common
surprises include coffee cans of pennies and dead rats.
A central system can be cleaned by a professional with a HVAC license for
$250-400. Bill says beware of those companies who come in and simply wash the
registers and inside the ductwork only as far as they can comfortably reach,
ignoring the most important parts — the motor and the condenser coils where
most of the grime accumulates. Because a good cleaning may help the unit last
longer and run more efficiently, maybe your landlord would split the cost with
you.
If you’re a die-hard do-it-yourselfer, I have it on good authority (the Home
Repair and Improvement series of books from Time-Life, no less), that you can
tackle this cleaning project yourself, although it “requires both a gentle
touch and a firm hand. ” The fins on the cooling coils are delicate and should
be lightly brushed and vacuumed. The encrusted grunge on the fan and blower,
however, might require a wire brush or putty knife. And my lawyer and the
Association for Overstating the Obvious wants me to remind you to turn off
the breaker first.
Barring this endeavor, you can do some simple things to control recirculating
all that disgusting stuff. Use good return-air filters and change them
frequently, about once a month. Make sure the condensation drain tube isn’t
clogged. (Add a little water and light to that benign dust and suddenly you
have a bacteria cafeteria.) And quit shedding.
This article appears in September 13 • 1996 and September 13 • 1996 (Cover).