Keep Your Furnace Clean During Renovations

Making whatever dream you have for your home come true will involve a lot of moving parts. There will be contractors, crews, building inspectors, and deliveries all happening at your home. If you’re getting involved in a DIY home improvement or renovation, your home may be under construction for a month or more.

Building an addition? Don’t forget to plan for keeping your new living space comfortable with an energy-efficient heating and cooling system.

To avoid costly ductwork and possibly upgrading your existing furnace, consider installing a ductless mini-split to handle your climate control needs. Today’s energy-efficient heat pumps are becoming a popular, cost-effective way to stay warm in the Northeast.

For everyone not adding on, here’s how to avoid increasing the cost of your project by preparing your HVAC system for a home renovation.

The Goal:

If you have a gas furnace or other forced-air heating system, keeping dust particles out of your heating system is the main goal to protect it during home improvement projects.

If drywall dust and sawdust infiltrate your HVAC system, you run a range of risks to your budget, from paying for a professional to clean the ductwork all the way up to replacing permanently damaged equipment.

Target the source of the problem and try to limit the amount of sawing in the house. Demolition and construction gets messy. During the construction phase, carpenters typical set up cut stations of table saws, circular saws, miter saws, and many others depending on the job.

Setting up cut stations in a garage or, if the weather permits, outside can go a long way to reducing the amount of dust particles in the house.

No matter how clean the job site looks, it doesn’t hurt to vacuum the rest of the house as much as possible. If you let it go too long, you’ll notice a film of dust covering everything.

Running your heating system during construction sucks all the harmful dust particles into the ductwork and furnace.

Turning off your HVAC system is the preferred approach during warm weather. If construction takes place in cold weather, you must drain your pipes if you turn off the heat completely.

Many builders will turn off the heat during demolition, and then run it as needed with special filters for the floor registers.

Even with precautions, HVAC best practices calls for changing the furnace filter once a week when the heat remains on during demolition and construction.

Block all the floor registers.

There are many ways to block vents depending on how far your renovation goes. If you’re building an addition or undertaking a major remodel, blocking an open floor vent can be as easy as screwing a piece of plywood over it temporarily. In this case, an alternative source of heat is needed if construction is done in freezing temperatures.

When the heat remains on, use special duct covers to keep dust, dirt, and debris out of your vents.

Change the filter.

After your renovation is complete and the final cleanup is done, continue to check your furnace filter and change as needed. If you’ve been running the heat, you should be changing it weekly.

Now that the work is done, the furnace filter will still capture tiny particulates in the air our eyes can’t see. But, they will build up on the filter!

A new furnace filter keeps your furnace clean and running at its more efficient.

Whenever possible, hire professional cleaners to thoroughly clean your ductwork and service your furnace when your home improvement project is complete.