Residents of apartments rarely remember about normally working ventilation. But if the windows begin to fog up in the rooms, the smell of dishes being cooked in the kitchen spreads freely throughout the apartment, water constantly appears on the walls in the bathroom, the air is stuffy and stuffy, then the ventilation system has stopped working normally. In order not to risk the health of the people living in the apartment, the condition of the furniture and other interior items, it is better to eliminate the causes of these problems as quickly as possible. This may require cleaning ventilation in the apartment.
Checking the operation of the ventilation system
Before proceeding with active actions, you should check how the ventilation in the house works. Doing it yourself is not at all difficult.
On the forums, it is advised to check with the flame of a burning match or lighter. With a normally working hood, the flame should deviate towards the ventilation grill. Many people remember similar pictures from Soviet times, calling to check the draft in the gas column and the hood in the kitchen.
Representatives of utilities, especially gas workers, strongly oppose the method of checking the operation of ventilation in an apartment with a lighter. In residential buildings with main gas pipelines, gas leaks are quite possible, which should just be drawn into a common ventilation pipe. In this case, it is possible to provoke an explosion of a combustible mixture, which will lead to the most unfortunate consequences. Therefore, it is recommended to do the check in a safer way.
In order to be safe check the operation of the ventilation, you need to do the following:
- Cut off from a newspaper or just a sheet of ordinary writing paper a strip about 30 cm long and 3 cm wide.
- Bring this strip to the ventilation grill with doors and windows closed.
- If the strip is attracted to the grate, then everything is working properly and cleaning the ventilation is not required. And if it is attracted weakly or does not react at all, then it is necessary to look for reasons. Most likely, you will have to clean the ventilation ducts.
Similarly, you need to do with all the ventilation grilles to get the full picture. In most apartments, they must be in the kitchen, bathroom or bathroom.
Causes of clogged ventilation
The most common problem leading to malfunctions in the ventilation system is clogging of the channels that conduct air. Most often this happens due to the long-term accumulation of grease, soot and dust inside them, because most residents of apartment buildings are limited to wiping the outer part of the gratings.
In old houses, the brickwork of the air ducts collapses under the influence of time and water getting inside, seeping from above or evaporating from the bathroom, and brick fragments can fill up the ventilation shaft, interfering with air exchange. It is not uncommon for unscrupulous tenants, wanting to improve their apartment and expand their living space, destroy the ledge in which the ventilation shaft passes, blocking the access of air to the apartments of the rest of the inhabitants of the house. Uninvited tenants also contribute to blockages in ventilation: birds or wasps.
Residents of multi-apartment residential buildings should remember that representatives of special services should be involved in cleaning the main air duct. So if the ventilation does not work due to clogging, you should contact the management company that services the house. The maximum that residents can do on their own is to clean the ventilation ducts leading from the apartment to the common duct.
How to clean ventilation
After checking each hood in the kitchen, bathroom and rooms, it will become clear which channels are clogged.If the ventilation does not work in all rooms, most likely the problem is in the common channel and nothing can be done on your own, if only in one - there is a local blockage that can be eliminated. For this you need:
- Remove the decorative grille and clean it of accumulated deposits. In this case, it is quite possible to use neutral detergents.
- Carefully remove dust, dirt and soot from the walls of the ventilation duct with a scraper, and then pull it out with a vacuum cleaner.
When cleaning, do not use aggressive chemicals that can corrode and damage the walls of the shaft. It is unacceptable for debris from the ventilation duct leading from the apartment to enter the common duct. When cleaning, care must be taken: sometimes nests of wasps or hornets are found in the ventilation.
Ways to improve ventilation in the apartment
What to do if cleaning the ventilation did not help? It is possible that the air circulation inside the apartment itself is disturbed. Having dealt with the causes of this violation, it is possible to improve the ventilation of the air in the living room.
Violation of air circulation between separate rooms
The first step is to repeat the test with a strip of paper, but at the same time open all the interior doors. If the paper is attracted under such conditions, then the air circulation between the individual rooms of the apartment is disturbed. To improve it, it is recommended that when installing doors, make a gap between their lower edge and the floor of several centimeters.
If the doors are already installed or you don’t want to make such a gap, for example, in a bathroom or a bathroom, then you can drill a series of holes in the door, tilting inward. Subsequently, they should be decorated with a fine mesh. This design will provide ventilation with tightly closed doors and will not violate the privacy of people in the bathroom or bathroom.
Airtight double-glazed windows
Another reason for the violation of ventilation can be the installation of plastic windows with double-glazed windows. In Soviet-built houses, the influx of fresh air from the outside was implied through small cracks and gaps in wooden window frames. Qualitatively installed plastic windows in a fully closed state exclude such replenishment. As a result, the ventilation in the apartment is also disturbed. Therefore, if you are thinking about installing double-glazed windows, then preference should be given to models with a micro-ventilation system.
Already installed double-glazed windows, devoid of such functional features, are easy to modify on their own. Inexpensive ventilation valves are available for sale, installed on the frame and sash of the window.
There are models of ventilation valves with manual adjustment and automatic devices that respond to an increase in the level of humidity in the room.
Lack of natural ventilation
It is advisable to equip some rooms, such as a kitchen, toilet or bathroom, with additional ventilation devices so that water vapor and odors are drawn out as quickly as possible, and not spread throughout the apartment. The simplest solution to this problem is to install a device that provides forced ventilation. A fan adapted for long-term operation in conditions of high humidity can be mounted at the outlet of the ventilation duct instead of a grill or inside the air duct.
As a rule, modern houses already at the construction stage are equipped with an integrated supply and exhaust ventilation system. But it is required to carry out a serious restructuring of the entire apartment, if there is a desire to install it in old houses.A centuries-old natural ventilation system is more preferable if it does its job well, and to improve its performance, it is enough to use the above methods.
