Cleaning your house must be a terrible chore if you have to do it too often because everything just gets a little too dusty quickly. Indoor dust has a number of sources, but your air conditioning system may be a culprit if dust accumulates on surfaces of your furniture too soon. Rapid dust buildup in homes and ac maintenance on Maui are among the enigmas we usually see and solve, and fixing these problems is usually easy.
Checking Your HVAC Filters
As part of the routine for ac maintenance on Maui, one of the first things we check when your home has decided to become a dustbin is your AC filter. As your air conditioner sucks in air from your home, it sucks in dust and dirt too. All of that stuff ends up in the filter, which eventually becomes clogged. A clogged filter can no longer remove dust from your indoor air.
Checking your filters should be part of your regular HVAC checkup and ac maintenance on Maui at least once a month. Dirty filters should be cleaned or replaced. If you have pets or for some reason, your house is susceptible to dust buildup, you probably should replace your HVAC filters more often. Consider consulting us if you’re wondering how often you should change your home’s air conditioning filters in Maui.
We recommend filters with a high MERV rating. They’re more expensive than average filters, but they can capture finer dust particles. They cause your AC to eat more energy, though.
Choose a filter that’s appropriately sized for your AC, too. Upon installing it, secure it tightly around all sides. Gaps will let dust in the air return and blow it back into your home.
Sealing Ductwork Leaks
Most people don’t suspect leaky ducts as a cause of dusty rooms, but defective or old ductwork can contribute to a dirty air streaming into your living room. Even if you have regular ac maintenance on Maui, your well-maintained HVAC ducts can still develop cracks or gaps over the years because of age. Nonetheless, poor installation may also lead to premature damage in the ductwork. But so what if your ducts have cracks? Well, the dust gets into the cracks, flows with the air throughout the ductwork, and exits the vents. Your rooms are now in a soup of dusty air.
Even an untrained eye can see signs of dusty airflow by taking a closer look at the vents. Do you see dirt accumulation around the vents? If so, then your ducts are probably leaky. Another way to inspect the ducts is by turning off all the lights and using a flashlight to see a stream of dust being ejected from a leak. You can then patch small cracks with a duct. However, the problem isn’t always as simple as this. Sometimes the leak is located in inaccessible parts of the ductwork.
If your efforts of fixing the problem don’t work, it’s always smart to call professional ac maintenance on Maui to do the job. The mistake is to investigate further and tear into your walls to check out your ducts. You could be doing more harm than good. Licensed HVAC technicians in Maui can identify and patch leaks in unreachable places.
Regulating Your Home’s Humidity
Maui has such an incredibly varied climate for such a small island. Wailuku and Kahului are in the center of the island with a humid tropical climate. Kihei, on the other hand, has a drier climate. The elevated regions of the island are generally cooler and wetter. These climatic variations present different challenges for HVAC systems.
Both wet and dry weather affect your air conditioners in different ways. In places with humid climates, more moisture in the air means more water vapor clinging to dust particles. Moist dust particles are heavier and tend to get trapped into filters much more easily. And dirty filters mean a dusty home, as we’ve said earlier.
But drier climates present another problem. Dry, dusty air tends to flow more easily and, thus, is able to travel farther into the ductwork. This problem is exacerbated by leaks in the ducts. Leaks can suck in air in certain places. If you have a leaky duct in your dry, dusty attic, then the dust is sucked in and released into other parts of the house.
So we’ve talked about ac maintenance on Maui and cleaning or replacing your filters and patching leaky ducts. The other important thing to do is regulating the humidity inside your home so that your indoor air is neither too dry nor too humid. You may need a humidifier or a dehumidifier, depending on how dry or humid your home is.
Bonus Tip
You won’t be able to get rid of dust totally despite the repairs and ac maintenance on Maui. The goal is to reduce dust indoors as much as possible. But try turning on the thermostat fan after cleaning your filters. Doing so traps dust.
Dust in your home is a real bummer. Contact Pacific Air Conditioning in Wailuku, Hawaii, if you need to have your leaky ductwork fixed or you need to change your home’s air conditioning filters in Maui. Call us at 808-244-0161.