What’s Crawling Around in Your Home’s Air Ducts?

It’s unpleasant to consider, but often times dust isn’t all that is in your duct system. You might have heard animal noises coming from air ducts and fear you have unwanted guests. You can attempt to lure the creatures out but they may be nesting and refuse to leave their babies. Call Enercare A1 Chesney for a complete duct cleaning and we will confirm your duct system is free of all these nasty house guests, such as: 

Bugs and Insects 

Nothing is worse than aiming to kill a spider and seeing it escape into the air vent. You can’t get to it now and all you can do is lay in bed and imagine the thing laying all those spider babies. You may even believe you hear a few scrambling around your duct system. Don’t worry. Enercare A1 Chesney will come out and give you a complete duct cleaning and make sure that spider and any of her yucky friends are good and gone. Babies, too. 

Rodents 

When rats, squirrels, and other wildlife make their way into your duct system, usually through openings in the duct work and breaks in the foundation or home exterior, it causes multiple issues. First, wildlife can leave droppings behind and can ruin anything they encounter, including holiday decorations or old baby clothes you’re keeping in your attic. Second, rodents tend to chew, which can leave you with exposed wiring. That joined with the dried grass and leaves they’re likely carrying in to manufacture a nest, and that creates quite the fire risk in your attic, behind your walls, and in your duct system. A professional duct cleaning can get rid of rodent droppings or nests, but you might also need to call animal control to remove the mice, squirrels, or other wildlife and perhaps an electrician if there was any wire damage. 

Birds 

Birds typically get into safe and dry places to nestand your air vents meet that criteria. Nests mean eggs, which means they are feeding babies, and that means BUGS. If you find birds in your vents, you’ll presumably end up with bugs in your home. But that’s not all. Birds construct nests in your vents, and given the vast amount of materials they use to build said nest, it can result in completely clogging a vent, stopping any airflow. As with mice, squirrels, etc., a professional duct cleaning from Enercare A1 Chesney can eliminate any droppings, feathers, or other potential illness-carrying leave-behinds. You may also need an expert animal removal company to actually remove the birds from your vents or attics. 

Mice in Air Ducts 

If you have mice in the air ducts, you should take steps to quickly remove them. Mice chew through wires and leave feces like most rodents, but they also multiply quickly. And when they run around in the ducts, treating it like the highway of your house, they usually die in there. This creates unhealthy living conditions, and you may notice an unsavory odor. 
 
You may suspect mice due to the noise you hear – lots of scratching and scrabbling in ductwork. Or you could actually see one making an escape into the air vents in your walls. You could even confirm their passage by inspecting the ducts for mice feces. Either way, if you you’re worried you have mice you have two options. You could trap them yourself, by placing traps inside each duct and checking them every morning. Or you might decide to hire a specialist. 
 
Once you’ve determined that the mice are gone, you really should have your ducts expertly cleaned by an HVAC company. If mice have been living in the walls, they will have left mice refuse in your ducts. Mice droppings are toxic, and if you don’t remove them from your ducts they can make you sick. Enercare A1 Chesney offers duct cleaning services that will eliminate most debris from your home’s air ducts. 

Call Enercare A1 Chesney today or schedule online for a full duct cleaning to help assure the air you and your loved ones are breathing is healthy and pest-free.