One of the best things that you can do for the heating equipment in your Gastonia, NC home is change its filter. Although most furnace manufacturers recommend swapping out air filters once every 30 to 90 days, this isn’t the ideal schedule for every household. Read on to discover some of the factors that influence the life spans of furnace filters and find out just how often you should be changing yours.
Standard Furnace Filters and What They’re Made to Protect
Recommendations to replace HVAC air filters every one to three months generally apply to the standard filters that equipment manufacturers install when assembling their products. These filters aren’t especially thick. In fact, most have a thickness of just one or two inches. They also aren’t built to retain a lot of debris.
You can find out whether a standard filter has reached its capacity by taking it out and holding it up to the light. In most cases, if light can still pass through a filter’s accumulated debris, air can too. When HVAC air filters have thick, lint-like mats of hair, dust, and other allergens, furnaces have an incredibly hard time forcing air through them.
Dirty filters are among the most common causes of airflow problems in residential HVAC systems. These problems also both easy to prevent and easy to correct. Inspecting your furnace filter every 30 days will ensure that massive build-ups never have the chance to form.
Running your furnace with a dirty filter will result in increased indoor humidity, poor heating system performance, and problems like overheating and short cycling. If you neglect the issue for too long, your furnace may even permanently shut down.
The Primary Purpose of Standard Furnace Filters
Standard furnace filters aren’t made to protect human health. Although these components capture and retain many allergens and contaminants that are harmful to humans, they’re largely intended to keep these same particulates out of the interior of heating systems. If you aren’t checking and changing your furnace’s filter often enough, you could wind up with a dirty intake valve, a dirty pilot light, or a debris-covered and malfunctioning thermocouple.
Establishing the Right Maintenance Schedule for Upgraded Furnace Filters
All filters receive maximum efficiency reporting value (MERV) ratings based on the types and amount of debris they collect. With higher numbers denoting better ratings and greater efficacy, standard HVAC air filters have MERV ratings of just six to eight.
Upgrading your furnace’s filter is a great way to improve your indoor air quality. With a higher-performing filter, your furnace will extract more allergens and contaminants from your indoor air. Higher-rated filters have a tighter mesh that allows less airborne debris to pass through them. Given their enhanced thickness and multiple layers of filtration materials, they also have greater surface area. Not only does this enable them to collect more pollen, dander, and dust, but it also extends their life spans. Thus, while a standard, one- to two-inch filter should be changed every one to three months, filters with a thickness of three to four inches typically last six to nine months. With these options, you can install a new filter at the start of the cooling season and you won’t need to take it out for replacement until winter reaches its end. Nevertheless, it should be inspected frequently.
Filters that are five to six inches thick last even longer. Many of these components only need to be changed once every nine months to a year. However, before leaving any filter in place for longer than three months, consult with one of our HVAC technicians to get recommendations that are specific to the furnace you own and the filter type you’re using.
Your Indoor Air Quality
For some households, standard HVAC air filters are all that’s necessary for maintaining an acceptably high indoor air quality (IAQ). These components can capably capture and retain carpet and textile fibers, pet hairs, human hairs, dust, dirt, and other common indoor debris. Some even collect a fair amount of dander, pollen, and dust mites too. Although standard furnace filters must be inspected every 30 days and changed every one to three months, they’re low in cost and easy to obtain.
For other homes, environmental and household-specific IAQ concerns make higher-rated filters or more frequent filter changes essential. If you constantly have a low IAQ, you can either upgrade your filter or try swapping it out every three to four weeks. In larger households and homes with indoor pets, standard filters can accumulate substantial build-ups of debris within just 21 days.
The Size and Makeup of Your Household
Having a larger household means having more people who take steamy baths and showers, engage in cooking projects, burn candles, discharge surface cleaners, and shed hair and dead skin cells. In a busy, bustling household, there’s always something decreasing the quality of the indoor air. There’s more foot traffic in larger households as well. With lots of people coming and going, you’ll have a lot more dirt and pollen being tracked in.
The Air Around Your Home
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), indoor air is often more contaminated than the air outside. It can actually be two to five times more contaminated. Notwithstanding this fact, you must account for the quality of air around your home when establishing your filter change schedule. For instance, if there’s a large, active construction site nearby, loose soils and other fill materials could find their way into your living environment via a damaged or poorly maintained venting system, open windows and doors, aging ductwork, cracks in building materials, and other access points. You could struggle with this same problem if you have yet to landscape your own backyard.
If the air around your home is excessively dirty, a filter upgrade will provide modest improvements to your IAQ. Having an air purifier, air scrubber, media filter, or other integrated accessory installed will benefit you more. In the meantime, inspect your standard air filter every 21 to 30 days and swap it out as needed.
The Age of Your Furnace and Your Ducting
Old, dirty furnaces need frequent filter changes too. As heating systems age, their requirements for maintenance increase. In addition to the airborne particulates that are being drawn out of your home and through your furnace’s filter, there can also be trapped debris in the interior of this equipment that adds to the fray.
When ductwork ages, it often develops loose connections, rips, perforations, and other structural damage. With ripped ducting, your HVAC system will take in air that never has the chance to pass through your filter. Having damaged ductwork fixed is easily the best solution. However, until your ductwork is replaced, you should faithfully inspect your furnace filter monthly or more often.
Allergies, Asthma, and More
In addition to the general makeup of your household, you should also account for the needs of the individual residents. Although replacing a standard furnace filter every 30 to 90 days might suffice for everyone else, it may not be enough for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, allergies, or any other serious respiratory condition. Frequent filter inspections and changes are also best for households with aging adults, newborns, and people with compromised immune systems or terminal illnesses.
For more than 50 years, we’ve been a trusted provider of heating and cooling services throughout Gastonia, NC and the surrounding communities. We offer air conditioner, furnace, and heat pump replacement, maintenance, and repairs. We also provide duct cleaning, indoor air quality improvements, and property management services. Contact us at Roland Black Heating & Cooling today to schedule an appointment.