Pets and Dust In Air Ducts. The common issue and how to deal with it.

Are you a pet lover? Pets are just amazing; they are your best friend and such a great source of relaxation. However, there are a few issues that arise with pets being at your home. 

Often, you may hear from your guests coming to your place that they are allergic to pet hair, and allergies can have worse consequences for them.

However, the truth is, pet hair isn’t really an allergy for them. People think they are reacting to pet hair when they are intolerant of dust, urine, saliva, and pet dander, which accompany pet hair. 

Usually, animals shed dead skin cells through their activities, which we call “dander.” The best way to make your house more comfortable is to control pet dander.

Pet Dander and Your Health

Inhaling pet dander can exacerbate respiratory symptoms in those with allergies. People with reactions may have symptoms like these, even though their sensitivity levels vary.

• Rashes
• Runny nose
• Sneezing
• Wheezing
• Watery or itchy eyes
• Congestion

How To Control Pet Dander

People think some pets have different kinds of fur that don’t trigger allergies. You’ll find dander in your home if you have an animal with a lot of fur and skin. Here are a few ways you can reduce pet dander at home:

• Make filtration a priority. Make sure your air handling unit has a HEPA filter. Pet dander is better captured by HEPA filters. Using an air filter or purifier with a HEPA filter can help eliminate excessive pet dander from your home.
• Make sure your carpets, furniture, and curtains are clean. Dander can be removed deep down as well as on surfaces when you steam clean. For a quick fix, use a sticky lint roller.
• Make sure your home’s air ducts are clean. A detailed air duct cleaning eliminates accumulated pet dander and wipes off the surfaces inside the air ducts.
• Bathe your pet. You can prevent excess dander from entering your home’s air by regularly bathing your pet.
• Don’t let your space get cluttered. Pet dander sticks to anything. It is simpler to effectively clean an area when there are fewer trinkets for dander to stick to, but there are also fewer places for dander to hide.

Is Your Ventilation System Circulating Pet Dander?

We can’t live without our pets. Not only do they make our lives better, but they also help us with our issues. There are more and more benefits to owning a pet.

You can reap endless benefits from having a pet in your family. Pets can, however, cause allergies in some family members.

Skin and hair flakes are shed by pets regularly into the environment, which causes pet dander. As your heating and cooling systems turn on and off, they become airborne and travel through your home.

Pet dander affects a lot of people. Living with pets can cause a lot of symptoms because your immune system can’t handle viruses and bacteria. Pet dander constantly circulates through your ventilation system if you have pets. There’s no way around it. The impact can be reduced, though.

Maintain A Clean House

Dead skin cells make up dander. You can get dander on any surface in your home because the particles are airborne. So don’t forget to clean up any area of your house that’s been touched by animals. 

Clean your hardwood floors by sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping them. Vacuum sofas and carpets, and wash down walls and tables (wear a mask if you have severe allergies). Consider hard flooring if your allergies are bad.

Clean Up After Your Pets

The more you wash your animals, the less dander builds up on their fur and skin. To lessen the chance of fur and dander spreading throughout the house, it is preferable to bathe your dogs twice a week, preferably outside. Cats can be tricky to bathe, but you can brush them.

Keep Pets Out Of Your Bedroom

Your pet shouldn’t spend a lot of time in the bedroom. If you’re allergic, don’t let them sleep with you. The more time your pet spends in your bedroom, the more pet dander accumulates there, causing more reactions. 

Allow your pet to spend more time in other rooms by keeping the bedroom door closed during the day.

Proper Flooring

Make sure you install the right flooring throughout your house. Select low-pile carpet if you have it. Cleaning will be easier, so pet dander won’t stick to the fibers as much. Make sure you clean it often so that you don’t leave any skin particles behind.

Seal Your Air Ducts

Don’t forget to seal your ducts. It can let pet dander and dust build up in your ductwork if they are unsealed and have leaks in the ventilation system, which blows through your vents and into your living space. You can get rid of allergens by vacuuming with a HEPA filter.

Regular Maintenance

You need to keep your home clean if you have pets. Keep your HVAC system running smoothly by changing your filters regularly. Clean your ductwork regularly to remove allergens from your air supply and prevent them from coming back.

Why Do Pets Make Air Duct Cleaning Essential?

Cleaning your home’s air ducts is a good idea even if you don’t have pets. Your ducts need to be cleaned more frequently if you have pets because you’ll get pet dander, fur, and dust in your air conditioner. Having your ducts cleaned routinely if you have furry friends in the house will provide you with the following benefits:

Eliminates Pet Dander

If you have pets, cleaning your air ducts on a regular basis is one way to remove pet dander. Pet dander appears on furry, hairy, and feathered animals, similar to dandruff on humans. 

Air ducts can collect pet dander as it floats around. Heating or cooling your home can push dander back out through the vents. This makes your house look dusty and causes problems for asthmatics.

Eliminates Pet Hair And Fur

Getting your ducts cleaned can help remove pet hair and fur. Fur and hair can get stuck in your ducts, slowing down airflow. Your energy usage spikes because less air gets into your home. Like pet dander, pet hair and fur in ducts can cause allergies and breathing problems for people with pet allergies.

Eliminates Pet Odor

Pet odors can be removed with duct cleaning. There’s a good chance your home smells like your pet, if you have one. If you try air fresheners or carpet cleaning to get rid of the smell, nothing works. 

Air ducts and vents can trap the odor in some cases. Cleaning your air ducts will help get rid of odors from pets that are difficult to get rid of.

Do Pets Affect Indoor Air Quality?

There’s no doubt that dogs and cats are part of the family. The issue is that your pet is polluting your indoor air quality (and thus making you sick). What impact does your pet have on your home’s indoor air quality?

Air pollutants breed in pet hair. Your air is contaminated if your eyes are scratchy, you wheeze, and your nasal membranes are inflamed. Even if you are not allergic to your dog or cat, they can make you sick.

Indoor Air Pollution Causes Health Problems

The airborne particles in your pet’s hair are full of pollen, dust mites, and bacteria. Biopollutants can be collected on a cat’s hair even if it’s indoors. Pollutants make the air you breathe worse.

Air quality is a big deal when it comes to respiratory problems. There are a lot of respiratory problems associated with pet hair, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Indoor air pollution is mainly responsible for asthma and allergies.

A few symptoms of indoor air pollution include wheezing, difficulty breathing, and burning, itchy eyes.

What Can I Do To Keep Animals Out Of My Air Ducts?

Keeping a house in order and running smoothly is a complex task that most people overlook. Many residents end up with rodent problems due to this issue. 

Currently, it is possible to take a few basic precautions, including clearing trash and utilizing traps. However, some homeowners wish to take it a step further and keep them out of the HVAC ducts. These three methods prevent animals from entering air ducts.

Place Things Around Your Air Ducts

Sometimes cats and other small animals get into the air ducts. This is a concern because the homeowner will have to try to entice the animal out by themselves. Of course, rodents are more difficult to get rid of.

Air ducts can be blocked to prevent this. There’s no way to completely block them. When you place furniture and other things nearby, you won’t have to worry about your cat getting into the air duct.

Check The Entry Points

A rat or other rodent often sneaks into the house without being noticed. Small rodents can slide through easy access points in most homes, which is more common than most people think. 

Make sure your roof and wall vents don’t have any tiny gaps to prevent this. Cats won’t fit in them, but rats and other small animals can sneak in just fine. Make sure you check other common entry points around the house. It will be worthwhile to invest time in avoiding problems from the start.

Traps

A homeowner may have to remove rodents if the problem gets out of control. This can be done by setting traps or hiring a pro. When you get rid of existing mice and rats, you won’t see them reproduce and cause more problems in the future.

Keeping mice and other disgusting rodents at bay is a smart homeowner’s job. You can avoid the most expensive and serious problems if you follow these steps.

Why Pets Get Dandruff

Hormones

Symptoms of excess scaling can be caused by hormonal imbalances, such as hypothyroidism, which affects your pet’s metabolism and body temperature. It will make your pet’s skin flaky because of this imbalance. Additional symptoms of hypothyroidism aren’t just dandruff.

Allergies

There are a lot of allergens that can cause a skin reaction in pets, from dust mites to pollen to certain food allergies (especially protein sources). Pets with allergies have dry skin and itchy skin. A secondary complication of allergies can be superficial skin infections.

It’s difficult to tell the difference between dandruff and skin infections from allergies. Dandruff can be worsened by skin infections and itching, which cause more damage to the skin.

Low Humidity

You might be stripping your pet’s skin of moisture if the air is especially dry in your home or neighborhood. As a result, your pet’s skin becomes flaky and gets scratched frequently. Winter is a miserable time for pets, especially if your furnace or wood stove is on.

Cheyletiella Mites

Itchy and irritating, these tiny white parasites lay eggs in the skin and coat and feed on dead skin cells to make your pet’s life miserable. These mites can be extremely dangerous if your pet is not receiving flea preventatives.

Diet’s Not Good

The coat will become dry, rough, and, in some cases, sticky if your pet is not consuming a nutritionally balanced diet with ideal levels of vitamins and minerals.

Air Duct Cleaning

It is time to get your ducts cleaned, so what are you waiting for?

Hair and dander from a pet that gets into the air ducts will affect people who own pets. This builds up over time. Pet hair is not allergenic, but dander carried by the hair, which is invisible to the naked eye, can trigger allergies in many people.

Duct cleaning effectively controls the distribution of dander throughout the house, preventing your guests from smelling or feeling allergy symptoms during their stay.

It is worth noting that almost every mammal, even people, produces microscopic dander, so if the home seller has a pet with fur, it likely produces microscopic dander as well.

Is There Any Dust In The Air Ducts?

When homeowners consider getting their air ducts cleaned, they often wonder: how did the air ducts get dirty in the first place? I believe this is an extremely relevant question to ask. 

Everyday living can create up to 40 pounds of dust in a typical six-room home. Much of the dust stays suspended in the air instead of settling on your floors, furniture, or other possessions.

It is estimated that the HVAC system pulls these contaminants into the system, which is then recirculated five to seven times per day, on average. 

Even though the air is filtered, filters can’t remove all contaminants from the air. Due to the recirculation of air, the ductwork can accumulate contaminants over time.

Contaminants that are normally present in the environment include:

• Pollen
• Chemicals
• Dander
• Dust
• Mold
• Smoke

Air ducts, as well as all other parts of your HVAC system, need to be cleaned regularly throughout their lifetime.

• Cooling coil
• Supply ducts
• Return ducts
• Heat exchanger
• Filter
•  

A Checklist Of The Importance Of Air Duct Cleaning

Clogged Ducts And Vents

As the HVAC system starts up, you’ll probably see a small puff of dust. Normal heating and cooling systems don’t release dust or debris when the air starts flowing through the ducts when the system is turned on. It’s clear when you see the dust on an air register that it’s dusty.

Clogged Air Filters

 Pets and Air Duct Cleaning

If you have to replace your heating and cooling filters constantly, there might be a deeper issue. You should change your filters regularly. The replaced ones shouldn’t get clogged after a few days. You should check your air ducts if they do that.

Likewise, you should change your air filter every few months. Airborne contaminants like dust, dander, pollen, and pet dander are trapped by the filters.

Ducts Smell Bad

If the ventilation system smells musty, there’s debris in it, so you should clean it. The air duct system could be the source of an unpleasant smell in your house. Verify these suspicions by smelling every register up close. If the bad smell is coming from the air ducts, you can also get a technician to check them.

Indoor Or Outdoor Mold And Mildew

Getting sick from dust is terrible, but getting sick from mold is more dangerous. Mold and mildew make allergies more severe and spread quickly in your house. In other words, if you see mold around vent covers and air conditioners, act fast. 

Aside from cleaning out moldy HVAC ducts, technicians will suggest getting a home dehumidifier since mold grows in damp places.

Dandruff From Animals Inside Air Ducts

Pest infestation is another sign that your ducts need cleaning. What’s the point of cleaning your air ducts after a pest infestation? Basically, it’s to stop allergens and other disease-causing microbes from spreading. Bacteria, viruses, and vermin dander can be dangerous to your health.

Final Thoughts

Inhaling pet dander can exacerbate respiratory symptoms in those with allergies. You can reduce pet dander in your home by using HEPA filters, frequently cleaning your carpets, duct cleaning, and bathing your pet. 

To maintain the good health of your family members, you must maintain a clean house and do regular duct cleaning so that dandruff from animals doesn’t sit inside your air ducts and circulate through your vents.