Derek ColeGM, Simmons One Hour Heating & Air · AI HVAC Answers

Dirty Blower & HVAC System

28 Jan 2026 · 1 min

Episode

28 Jan 2026 · 1 min

0:00

Single-speaker podcast transcript explaining how dirt and dust accumulation on an indoor HVAC blower wheel (squirrel cage) degrades its fins, flattens the wheel, reduces airflow, and thereby impairs the system’s ability to push air into the house. The speaker recommends removing the blower wheel, cleaning/spraying it, drying it, and reinstalling it as part of maintenance.

Chapters

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, alright, it's pushing it in the house. So when that becomes dirty, when you have a dirt and a 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, but 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 blow wheel that it's going from a cup to straigh and therefore it's not catching the air, it's not throwing it back in the house.