Eliminate Musty Smell by Cleaning Air Ducts

LESLIE: Well, even renters have questions for The Money Pit; like Joyce in Florida who finds The Money Pit on WWBA. What can we do for you today?

JOYCE: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I’m renting about a 17-square-foot – 1,700-square-foot house.

TOM: I was going to say …

LESLIE: I was going to say that’s really small. (chuckling)

TOM: … that’s what we call a tent. (chuckling)

JOYCE: Well – and it is. But …

TOM: No …

LESLIE: No, no. Seventeen hundred square feet is fine. Seventeen square feet is very tiny.

TOM: (overlapping voices) (chuckling) Is a tent.

JOYCE: (overlapping voices) Yeah. Alright, alright. And it’s kind of musty and it’s an older home. And the windows are older, so it’s not sealed really well. And in Florida, somehow, it just seems – everything is more dusty. And I had wondered if it would be worth the money to actually get the vent system cleaned.

TOM: Well, I mean certainly that can help a little bit but that’s – this is Florida, so it’s not going to be the source of all the musty air. It is a ducted system? So you have forced air system there?

JOYCE: Right.

TOM: The other thing to take a look at is the filter system on that. Are there replaceable filters on the forced air system? There should be.

JOYCE: There are and I also have replaced the – you know, the intake air filters and it seems like I’m constantly replacing those. But I was just concerned that maybe I haven’t gotten it cleaned enough …

TOM: You could do it once. You could have a duct cleaner come in and suck all those ducts once so that you get all the dust out of there and then keep the filters replaced. You have to replace those filters like once a month, by the way. So I don’t know when you say, “A lot.” Once a month is really what they’re rated for. Those fiberglass filters are very inexpensive for a reason. They don’t last too long.

JOYCE: Right. And I have been. I’ve almost been going to like every three weeks or so (chuckling) and just …

LESLIE: And you should make sure that when you look for a filter, make sure you get a filter that has a MERV reading of six or higher because that will really do its best job to get fine particulates out of the air to clean the air, get scents out of the air, help you with any sort of airborne particulates.

JOYCE: OK, thank you so much for taking my call and for the time. And I enjoy your program.

TOM: Thanks, Joyce. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. 888-666-3974.