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Cleaning blower wheels

44K views 38 replies 25 participants last post by  54regcab  
#1 ·
How do you all clean them. I Need some good ideas.
 
#3 ·
I pull the blower assembly and take the motor off. Then I spray the wheel and the shroud with evaporator coil cleaner and hose it all off. I have also taken taken the assembly to a coin op car wash when I didn't have coil cleaner. I mark wires, direction of blower, anything I can think of to help in reassembly. Even though I KNOW how everything goes, it still helps me avoid "rookie" mistakes.
 
#7 ·
I have also cleaned wheels without pulling them. I think I am just as fast when I pull them. It takes a long time to toothbrush every blade and some of them you can't really get to. Then you run the risk of leaving an un-balanced blower wheel. Oh, and with a brush or other implement you run the risk of knocking off balancing weights.
 
#9 ·
back when I used to pull and clean a bunch of them doing residential p.m. Work , I took a one gallon plastic coil cleaner jug ,cut the bottom out of it and cut half of the side out of it so it looked like an ice scoop .... then , cut a small horizontal slot along the top ,so I could slide it down between motor and squirrel cage and rotate it so the motor support bracket arm is in the slot .......now using this motor shield ,I would blast it clean with coil degreaser and a garden hose through the discharge opening of the blower assembly ....if there was an operating condensing unit nearby ,I usually put the blower assembly on top of it to make sure it was dry while I was cleaning indoor coil .....hope this helps you ....

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2
 
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#10 ·
If I know its going to be a pain to take the blower motor off the squirrel cage I will set the assembly on the ground with the air opening facing me and use my tstat screwdriver and shop vac to get all the crud out. Ive got quite quick doing this way.
 
#23 ·
I heated a tstat screwdriver and bent the flat edge to better negotiated the curved blades. I can get some pretty uniform scraping action going. I mark the first blade with a sharpie and muster as much patience as I can until my mark comes back around, mini shop vac sucking up all the crud. If they want it really clean they are paying; and they will get the requisite "if the blowers this dirty, the coil is too" lecture.

I don't feel responsible for any motor that has been neglected and has been allowed to operate with a wheel covered with filth.
 
#11 ·
Lots of good suggestions, if you're not removing it from the housing though it will throw out a lot of loose dust on startup, no matter how well you've cleaned it. If possible try to start the blower before re-installing it to at least try to keep the A/C coil clean, but usually once the wheel gets clogged the coil is also!
 
#12 ·
i just use a burner brush and scrape and and down each blade from both sides of the wheel and have a vacuum running to suck up all of the crap, it doesn't get everything, but it gets more than enough, and I don't have to take the wheel off of the motor. Customers are always happy that i even took that extra step when doing a maintenance call, and always comment that they have never even seen a tech even pull the motor assemble out of the furnace.
 
#13 ·
I carry a 20# propane gas tank with the old style valve, filled with air and use that to blow out the blower wheel and pilot assembly while doing p.m. it is amazing how much crap some of those blower wheels have in them I cant guess how many places I have been that they dont think they need an air filter.
 
#15 ·
I take a piece of 3/8" copper, flatten it out and bend it in the shape of the wheel louvers. I scrape each individual louver with it then use a toilet brush to finish off the job. It takes about 15 minutes without taking the motor out.
I do the same thing when I change a motor and take the wheel out but I sometimes wash it off with a hose too.
 
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#19 ·
Depending on the type of dirt. air hose, garden hose. The really greasy nasty one get the dishwasher. We have a parts cleaning dishwasher at the office. The local supply does no stock blower wheels. We are out side of a Metro area. So 4 hours to get parts is not an option.
 
#24 ·
How NOT to Clean a Blower Wheel

I was once at a McD’s repairing a grill when some company showed up to address the restaurant’s poorly performing AC.

Some time later, while I was still toiling over my task, I heard some suddenly serious water splashing down onto the floor in front of the manager’s office. I met the manager as she came out and looked up to see the water pouring out of a return air grill…and some of the surrounding ceiling tiles. She looked at me in exasperation, so I said “I’ll go tell them to stop.”

On the roof, the guys had the RTU opened up and were mercilessly blasting away at it with a water hose. I asked “What are you doin’?”

One of them explained that the blower and evaporator coils were dirty, so he was cleaning them. So I told them about the rainstorm down below. One dude went wide-eyed and promptly exclaimed a mouth’s-full of expletives as he ran off and scurried down the ladder.

I remained on the roof until I was done laughing…
 
#26 ·
I was once at a McD’s repairing a grill when some company showed up to address the restaurant’s poorly performing AC.

Some time later, while I was still toiling over my task, I heard some suddenly serious water splashing down onto the floor in front of the manager’s office. I met the manager as she came out and looked up to see the water pouring out of a return air grill…and some of the surrounding ceiling tiles. She looked at me in exasperation, so I said “I’ll go tell them to stop.”

On the roof, the guys had the RTU opened up and were mercilessly blasting away at it with a water hose. I asked “What are you doin’?”

One of them explained that the blower and evaporator coils were dirty, so he was cleaning them. So I told them about the rainstorm down below. One dude went wide-eyed and promptly exclaimed a mouth’s-full of expletives as he ran off and scurried down the ladder.

I remained on the roof until I was done laughing…
lollll, this post belongs in the stupidest calls thread. What idiots!
 
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#27 ·
It's not a showroom car. I see no point in getting it like-new clean.

Take it outside or make some effort to keep the dust from going into supply duct. Chock the wheel from spinning and go at it with an electric leaf blower.

Wear safety goggles and a respirator since you'll get engulfed in dust like someone just threw a bag of flour in your face. It won't be perfectly clean, but it'll be 80% clean in less than 5 minutes.

Works great for appliances and computers too.
 
#29 ·
Any type of alkaline product will strip galvanizing though. Even baking soda. It will just make it much more likely to rust later on. You could soak it in a big tub of water filled up as high as you can without soaking the bearing and agitate it.

Here's my two cents as someone who is not in residential sales and against parts changer mentality.

I would reserve thorough cleaning for parts that are unusually expensive or difficult to locate. Replacing parts doesn't mean it has to be billed at repair rates. Removing the wheel gets difficult when there's corrosion or rusty shaft involved and you risk damaging it when you remove it.

Consider value of your time vs what the replacement parts cost. Time is much more valuable on a busy day or the payroll clock is ticking. If it's THAT BAD and customer consents, it could be win-win just to split the hub apart with a Dremel and replace both the motor and wheel for what you would've originally charged for the tune-up + parts at cost. You make the same or more doing less, customer gets new parts for great deal and if you charged cost or only a bit more, you didn't lose anything and you can feel more at rest knowing its unlikely to get called back a week later getting blamed for causing squeaky bearing on that tired old motor.

If you warped a wheel a bit and you discover it only after you spent all the time cleaning it and everything is back together you're doubly screwed. You wasted all the time plus you've to replace that wheel on your dime.
 
#31 ·
I'm not taking a blower wheel off the motor to clean it unless I'm replacing the motor. I did one just the other day that had never been cleaned in over 25 years. The cage was shaking and making a good bit of noise and it was the original motor. I pulled the squirrel cage out, took it down to my truck, scraped all the louvers, brushed off everything , put it back and had it running reasonably smooth in 30 minutes. I clocked the actual cleaning of the wheel with the motor still hooked up in the cage at 15 minutes. Basically all I billed for was a service charge. Now if you want to milk the job so you can inflate the bill, then by all means pull the motor and wheel but no one is going to convince me it's necessary.
 
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#32 ·
I hear you on the bent blower wheel. Not worried about rust, most of these units are over 25 years old and need to replaced.

I've tried the scraping and vacuuming but I don't like breathing in all that crap. A mask would help obviously, but still that stuff gets all over the place.
I guess I just find it a bit gross.

The hose with a straight nozzle blasts that crap off like right now.

If the shaft has rust on it sand it off first. PB blaster and tap lightly
 
#33 ·
That's why you take the blower assembly outside when its practical.

Try the plug-in electric leaf blower method. I do it to my desktop computer once a year or so(OUTSIDE, of course) , which doesn't have any type of filter, so the amount of dust plume that forms is quite impressive. Those things are like 400cfm @ 20,000 fpm albeit the motor is like 1hp and 15,000RPM. It'll make blasting off with nitrogen look like sweeping the street with a paint brush. What you want is a lot of cfm at high velocity, not puny cfms from high pressure.
 
#35 ·
If the Blower Wheel is nasty, the A-coil probably is also. Often the system is OLD, is it worth all the labor involved to clean blower & pull the A-coil on a system that's 10-15 years old? Or is the customer better off putting that money towards a new system?
 
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