how to babyproof vent covers?

[sarahsentry]

I'm wondering what I can do to babyproof the many vent openings in the house. I'm thinking that a kid could easily lift up one of the covers and stick their hands/legs/head into the vent opening and there are a lot of sharp edges and such in there. I haven't seen any products for this but perhaps I'm missing it - am I totally out to lunch?

[KrisM]

Can you rearrange furniture so they're inaccessilbe?

[AJP]

I had such a hard time with these that I ended up using masking tape on a few to keep them on the floor! NoW I'll need to replace 2 since I acnt get the tape residue off to save my life. My girls really, really loved picking these up and putting hands, feet and toys down there.

[sarahsentry]

There's no way we can cover them up, they're everywhere. Plus we can't block the air circulation or it will be impossible to regulate temperature in the house.
Most of my floors are carpet and so there's nothing to tape them down to, and they lift off so easily .... not sure what to do

[rin]

If there are any places where there IS flooring to afix tape to, gaffer tape won't leave sticky residue. You can buy it at most hardware stores: it's used a lot for stage set up, so you can tape wires down to the stage and not have performers trip on them.

Can you run a loop of twine/etc from the vent grate to something underneath, like a pipe or other bit of hardware, tie it off, and then do the same on the other side? You'd have to cut the twine to get the vent cover off, but you presumably wouldn't be doing that all that often.

[RunnerDuck]

If you need to get sticky residue off try WD40. I had to do the entire inside of my kitchen cabinets/drawers with wd40 and steel wool because some einstein thought to cover everything with contact paper... and remove it when they moved out... it was HORRIBLE.

[Pear]

My DD loved pulling off the vent covers. I had to tape them down.

[Nechums]

i used 3m velcro (the ones meant to hang up picture frames). easy enough for me to lift, but too difficult for the toddlers.

[o_mom]

I would just screw them down. Get a screw long enough to go into the subfloor and a washer. Then just place the screw through the washer and place the screw right on the edge of the vent. If you use drywall screws you probably won't even need to pre-drill. One on each end of the vent should be plenty.

I would also say - don't borrow trouble. Unless your child is actively going after the vents, they may never notice them or pull them up. If they do, then you can screw them down, but until then I would leave them alone.

[indigo99]

I'm obviously late to this thread, but I personally would just wait and see if it's a problem before trying to fix it. DS has maybe messed with a vent cover once and then lost interest.