How to Easily Clean your Furnace at Home

In this video here I’ll be showing you how to clean your furnace. To start, if you are uncomfortable with this in any way, I would not recommend it and it would be best to hire a professional. This does involve working with high voltage. Furnace designs do very well, so it’s always a good idea to take photos along the way so you know how everything goes back together properly. #hvac #heatingandcooling #housemaintenance

A dirty furnace can reduce airflow, cause foul odors, you’ll notice a reduction in heating and cooling performance and may affect your energy bill.

I am currently replacing the furnace in my house, the old one has been removed so I’m using this one as an example. As you can see there is no duct, when looking inside you can see the heating coils as well as some dust and debris on the walls.

First is turning off the breaker to the furnace, this is extremely important. You can try to manually turn on the furnace to ensure there is no power going to the unit. The voltage testers are also available.

Remove the side inspection panel, this will give us direct access to the blower motor.

This furnace is an older model and fairly simple to work on. Some of the wiring will need to be disconnected to fully remove the blower motor, this is the easiest cleaning method.

Once the wiring is unclipped and disconnected, then feed it through the hole. We only need to disconnect the wiring for the blower motor. Remember where all the terminal connectors are.

The blower motor on this model fits onto a slot and is held into place with a couple of small fasteners. Remove those small fasteners.

Then take the weight off the blower motor and slide it out of its location. Be careful as these can be heavy.

As you can see, this blower motor is filled with a fair amount of dust. This will cause foul odors, restrict airflow, and even reduce your heating and cooling performance.

Use a vacuum to clean up the dust. There is currently no duct attached to the furnace so it’s easy to clean the outlet side. The assistance of a broom can be used to remove the dust on flat surfaces.

Clean the inside of the duct around the heating element. Try to avoid touching the element.

Next is cleaning the around where the blower motor was located. Typically I like to start at the highest point and work my way down. That was any dust falls to the lowest point.

As for the blower motor, this is best to take it outside as this can get quite messy.

An air compressor can be used to clean a majority of the dust out. Typically it’ll just fall off. The blowing feature on a vacuum may also work if yours has that feature.

A low-profile brush can be used for other areas, in this case, a toothbrush for me. Make sure you clean all the fines on the fan.

Moving the fan in another orientation, I can access the other side of the fins.

Then it cleans the assembly around the fan, removing the dust stuck to the inside walls.

And finally cleaning the electric motor, using compressed air I find is the easiest method.

You’ll need to work at different angles to get rid of all the dust, making sure no corners or edges are missed.

When done, we can finally reassemble the furnace. The blower motor is slid back into place.

Then install the fasteners.

Reroute the wiring through the hole and then connect them in their appropriate places.

Using new cable ties, the wiring is fastened back into place. Make sure it doesn’t become tangled in the motor and is neatly out of the way.

Finally, the inspection panel can be installed back into place.

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