A beloved pet can bring a lot to your home. It can bring peace, companionship, and love. It can bring fun, energy, and laughter.

And, of course, it also brings fur, fluff, and sneeze-inducing dander.

Despite being a treasured member of the family, a pet can also be a burden on your home’s cleanliness. It’s not your dog’s fault that it loves to roll in the dirt, and it’s not your cat’s fault that it has long, dark fur… but that doesn’t change the fact that dirt and fur are getting all over the place. Sometimes that fur and dirt can even get into your home’s heating, cooling, and air systems, leading to further issues.

Luckily, there are a few easy things you can do to prevent pet hair and dander from messing with your home’s HVAC.

7 HVAC Maintenance Tips for Pet Owners

These tips will help keep your HVAC running smoothly. Beyond that, they’ll help reduce the amount of allergens in your home’s air, making it easier to live with the pets you love.

Make sure you’re regularly grooming your furry friends.

We know you love your pets and take the best care of them that you can. Sometimes, though, life gets in the way, and we forget certain chores like brushing our dogs and cats. If you’re not on a regular grooming schedule with your pets, they’re likely shedding more than they would be otherwise. That extra shed can get into filters or other parts of your home’s HVAC system. Taking care of pet fluff with a brushing schedule is an easy way to make sure you’re keeping it out of your vents.

Vacuum more often. 

This tip is another preventative one. Take a look at how often you’re vacuuming and try to fit at least one more session in each week. Pet hair loves getting caught in our carpet until we walk by and shuffle it into the air. From there, it can get into your ducts and circulate until it hits the filter.  

Take pets for more frequent walks.

Animals shed more in the hot summer months. All that extra fur has to go somewhere, whether it’s in your house or at the dog park. An extra walk or two a week can drastically reduce the amount of hair left to clog your vents.

Check on your air vents. 

Do you clean regularly but still have pet hair problems? On a related note, have you noticed one room is cooler or warmer than the others?  It could be that a large amount of pet hair has gotten caught in one of your air vents. Maybe Fido is scratching his butt right on the vent, giving his fur a one-way ticket to your home’s air system. We recommend adding vent cleaning to your regular weekly cleaning to prevent fluff from building up and blocking clean air flow.

Change your air filters. 

If, despite your best efforts, you’re still having trouble decreasing the amount of pet hair in your home, you’re not out of luck. Instead of preventative measures, you can move on to responsive ones. The first will be to get your air filters changed. Filters catch hair, and if there’s a lot in your home, they’re going to wear out faster than usual. We’ve written before on how to change your own air filters, and you can find that blog post here.

Get your ducts cleaned.

It’s good to regularly vacuum out your vents. But your home vacuum doesn’t have the muscle to get all the way into your ducts. A professional can use more powerful tools to vacuum out any hair or other detritus without doing damage to your ductwork. That way, after changing your filters or trying other preventative measures, you won’t have any old dander to negatively impact your efforts.

Invest in an air purification system. 

If you don’t think you have the time to take on the other tips in this post, that’s okay. There’s work involved in all of them and not everybody has room for more responsibility. If that’s you, then we recommend investing in a purification system for your home’s air. 

There are various options based on your needs and budget, but having one installed can give you the extra air cleaning power you’re looking for without you having to do any of the work yourself.

Taking care of your home’s HVAC can be ruff. After reading this post, you’ll meow have the tools you need to manage the impact your furry friends have on your HVAC. If you need assistance with anything else regarding your home’s heating, cooling, and air – feel free to get in touch with the team of experts at Welter Heating. We’ll fly your way in no time.