Learning About Commercial Air Conditioning Units

Air Duct Challenges Only Encountered By Homeowners Living In Cold Winter States

11 December 2019

Floyd Carroll

If you are a homeowner in the South, you may never experience half the challenges with your heating and air ducts that homeowners in the North experience. In fact, a lot of people who move from southern states to northern states are not only surprised by just how cold it really gets in winter, but they are also surprised at all the weird stuff that goes on with heating appliances and air ducts. Here are some of the air duct problems northern homeowners experience that most southern homeowners may never encounter. 

More Dead Pests in the Air Ducts

Winter has a way of chasing pests indoors in northern states. The pests cannot survive in the frigid cold outside, so they crawl indoors. The easiest way for them to move about your home (besides inside your walls) is in the air duct system. Unfortunately, with all of the constant dry heat going through the system, the pests do not live long, and some will die in the air ducts. They leave behind corpses that rot and smell (e.g., mice, voles, etc.) and/or the shells and husks of insects that can affect your breathing and air quality. Regularly scheduled or annual air duct cleanings will remove anything presently in the ducts, and then remove anything that gets trapped and dies each successive winter thereafter. 

Drafty Ducts

Ducts that are installed close to exterior walls often become drafty in winter. The cold air from the outside makes the ducts colder (because they are metal and therefore susceptible to ambient temperatures), and then they cause your furnace to switch on more often. If the ducts are not properly sealed around their connecting joints, they can leak cold air that comes from the outside walls closest to these ducts, making for very drafty duct lines. If the ducts are cleaned regularly, the HVAC technician performing the air duct cleaning would spot these trouble areas and fix them before winter hits. 

Indoor Air Quality Problems

All winter long, the heating appliance in a northern home is taking air from cold air return ducts and turning it into heated air that it circulates back into the rooms of a house. Literally everything that can possibly get sucked into a cold air duct can end up back in the same rooms via the hot air ducts. That includes dandruff, pet dander, fur, hair, skin cells, dirt, dust, and so on.

In the South, you can just open a window from time to time and air things out to introduce new air into the home. You cannot do that in a northern home in winter because of the frozen temperatures. Hence, the bad-quality air that is being circulated creates a lot of health problems for homeowners. Homeowners in the North have to clean their ducts more often to avoid these winter health problems. 

For more information, call an air duct cleaning service.

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