Learning To Clean Quicker

If you bought a house that was home to smokers, you may be unpleasantly surprised to find out the home has a lingering cigarette odor you didn't notice when you toured the home. Cigarette odors can be covered up for the short term, but it's difficult to get rid of them completely.

You may need to thoroughly clean the house to get rid of nicotine, tar, and smoke buildup. This includes cleaning the air ducts. You'll need to hire an air duct cleaning service since cleaning the ducts requires special tools. Here's how an air duct cleaning service can help you eliminate old cigarette odors in your new home.

Vacuum Out The Dust

The first step is to use a vacuum inside the ducts. The brush vacuum can be inserted into the side of the ductwork and fed deep into the ducts. The end of the vacuum has a brush or whip on it that knocks dust and buildup off the sides, top, and bottom of the ducts. At the same time, the vacuum pulls the dust out of the duct and outside your house.

Vacuuming gets rid of the layer of dust that holds on to tar and nicotine odors. Cigarette smoke has many chemicals in it that stick to the inside of ducts due to the sticky nature of tar. Once you start cleaning the house, you may find tar residue all over the home, including the walls and ceiling.

All the residue has to be removed to get rid of the cigarette smell completely. While you can wash down the walls, the inside of the ducts can't get wet, so the air duct cleaning service has to use tools that suck all the debris out of the ducts.

Deodorize The Ducts

The final step is to deodorize the ducts. The duct cleaning service might use a fogger that neutralizes smoke odors. This step is important since odors might remain trapped in the ducts and resurface every time you turn on the HVAC system.

Odor neutralizers are used since these break down the cause of the odors rather than just cover the smell up for a few days or weeks.

You may need to coordinate air duct cleaning with a visit from your HVAC company to clean the furnace in your home. In addition, you might need to wash down walls and seal them to keep smoke odors from leaking out.

You don't want odors to get back in the ducts once they've been cleaned professionally, so be sure to clean the rest of your home too so you get rid of the annoying odor for good.