Worried About Having a Bad Duct Cleaning Experience?Defending Your Home From Dust Mites
Dust Mites and Allergies in the Orlando-Kissimmee Areas of FL
Tiny dust mites could be living in your air ducts, linens, and carpeting, and can be the root of allergy problems. Most microscopic dust mites live in the dust accumulated in your air ducts. The mites feed on the particles of hair, food, and skin that litter your home as dust. Home dust mites, or HDM as allergists usually call them, are scientifically know as dermatophagoides farinae. If you or someone in your family has asthma, then dust mites could be one of the causes. Dust mites have either 6 or 8 legs depending on whether they are in the larval or post-larval stage. An average male dust mite lives only a short 19-30 days. The females, who live twice as long as males, are the ones who lay the eggs.
The only good thing about dust mites is that they do not bite. The dust mite most often lives on shreds of human skin cells. The average person sheds about 0.3-0.45 kg of skin annually which is enough food to feed close to a million dust mites. Dust mites like to live in beds and sheets because there is a lot of moisture from people's sweat, perspiration and what not. The most common source of household allergens, dust mites can cause or aggravate asthma, rhinitis, conjunctivitis, and dermatitis. The microscopic feces that dust mites leave all over your house and floating in the air contains DerP1, an enzyme that causes allergies.
The dust mites usually live in the most humid parts of your house, which is not generally the air duct system. Of course your air ducts are still full of all the things dust mites like to eat and live in. Duct systems then use a fan to move these dust particles all over your house. Because they are always moving air around, the dust mites never have to look far for food.
The following are all good ways to control dust mites:
- Replace your standard vacuum with a HEPA filtered one.
- Daily dusting of household surfaces.
- Do not forget to get your carpets, drapes, upholstery, and air ducts professionally cleaned.
- Have all the carpeting removed from your home.
- There are sheets and pillow cases that you can buy that are anti-allergen.
- You can freeze your kids stuffed animals.
- One of the best ways it to maintain a humidity of under 70%.
Having read the above you will now be able to greatly reduce the number of dust mites living in your home, and therefore have less allergies.
Well, that concludes our dust mites article. Hopefully you have a better handle on what the procedure involves and what you might search for in an air duct cleaning company. Since most air duct cleaning companies also clean dryer vents, you might want to read our dryer vent cleaning tips article as well. Having your dryer vent cleaned while the technicians are still at your home cleaning your air ducts, will save you money.
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