Your heating system in your home

[Freedom]

This is really for the health of the humans living in a multi-cat household. Or with multiples of any furry pets.

My home has a forced hot air heating system. This means warm air is pushed through ducts by a fan. There are also "returns" in two places in the house. The cooler air at floor level flows out of the rooms, down the return duct and back to the furnace to be heated. There is a filter down at the furnace which we remove and clean every 3 months. It is ALWAYS covered with cat hair.

By the way, the same duct system is used for my central air conditioning in summer.

As I increased my cats, I noticed cat hair collecting at the vent covers on the returns. I vacuumed these regularly.

It FINALLY dawned on me that the hair we are finding on the filter at the furnace is traveling all through the duct system to get there.

We removed the vent covers on the returns and fed the vacuum hose down. MASSES AND MASSES of cat hair came out! It was sticking to the sides of the ducts.

We have now added filters on the inside of the vents at the returns. Keeps the hair from even entering the duct system. The air in the house is cleaner, the ducts are staying cleaner, and the furnace will run more efficiently (and who doesn't want that?). We just did the first 3 month furnace filter clean over the weekend - the filter was hair free!!

Another light dawned on this marble head - we removed the vent cover on the front bottom of the refrigerator. CAT HAIR EVERYWHERE! It was sticking to the various parts of the fridge (whatever they are). We cleaned that all out, and added filter material on the inside of that vent cover too.

We attached the filter material with large size paper clips where they would work, and with those black clips with the steel "handles" in other places.

I thought this may be of interest to anyone with multiple furry pets.

[krazykitties]

yes it happens with several pets in the house...I had an air conditioner break down because of cat hair! I wasn't changing the filter often enough because it was an old model and very hard to take out/replace the filter for these old arthritic hands. I didn't realize how bad it was til it broke and the guy showed me the cat hair on the old A/C ! now I have a new one and it is easier to replace the filters every month, must be done each month. I am also having trouble with my fridge but not the freezer I think it may be because of cat hair also but I am not sure what to do other than to vacuume the vent on the front bottom of the fridge, I have done that and it still is not working well I might have to pull it out and vacuume the back of the fridge, but I don't know why only the fridge part is a problem and not the freezer part.

thanks for your post, too bad it wasn't posted last year!

[smokey the elder]

That's a good idea. I clean the coils every so often. I have radiator hot water heat so I don't have to worry about cat hair in the cold air return!