HVAC specialist Derek Cole shows how dust buildup on the blower wheel flattens its fins into a cake-like shape, choking airflow. Cleaning the wheel outdoors with a spray and dry restores the system's efficiency.
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Another thing is when you have a dirty unit, a dirty indoor blower motor and a dirty wheel, see what happens when you have the blower motor which pushes the air in the house, right? So it pushes the air in the house and uses what's called, we call a squirrel cage, but it's a blower wheel that actually pushes the air in. So if you look at the blower wheel, it's kind of like a cup. It has all these little fins on it all around the circle and it's taking air and it's throwing it and it's pushing it, all right? It's pushing it in the house. So when that becomes dirty. When you have dirt and dust buildup on it, it becomes flattened. So now you're trying to push air like this. Obviously not as effective as the cup, right? So one thing to look at is make sure your unit is clean. We go to quite a few systems where our blower wheel needs to be taken out, taken outside, cleaned, sprayed down, dried off, and then put back inside because there's so much of a cake of dirt and dust on that blower wheel that it's gone from a cup to to straight, and therefore it's not catching the air, it's not throwing it back in the house.