Cleaning the furnace

Something happened while in that storm.  Things are unusual in our house. The tornado that came through the space contained really strong, sustained winds.  My little cottage creaked and groaned loudly but stayed together, for the most part. I lost some shingles. The attic vent was ripped off but, I found it two blocks over.  Yet, that is not what has me troubled. I am now seeing bugs in my little cottage. And, I am seeing them coming out of the gas furnace and AC vents as well. The visual of a bunch of crawling critters rolling through the air duct and into the heating and AC unit is keeping me up at night.  Instead of getting afraid, I got proactive. The structure was really shook hard by the tornado. So, I started with sealing any and all cracks someplace I found them. Paying special attention to the attic, I sealed the entire attic floor around the perimeter. I re-sealed all the vents up there as well.  Next, I went outside and tore out all the weeds and lawn around the AC condenser unit. I used some paving stones to create a 3 foot buffer zone around the condenser in order to block another point of easy entry. Finally, I installed a few mesh screens over all the vents from our house to the inside. I’m going to see how this all works out.  If I have to have a duct cleaning crew come out, so be it. My heating and AC ducts are actually in need of a nice cleaning anyway. I simply can’t allow bugs to get into our heating and AC method and then spread through our house. I hate using toxic extermination chemicals; I’m hoping I can avoid that if at all possible. Hopefully, our efforts will result in no more bugs entering our heating and AC system.

heating equipment