Today I want to talk to you about the importance of regularly changing your air filters. As a homeowner the number one thing you can do to maintain your system is getting your air filters changed regularly. A lot of people ask questions like, “what kind of air filter should I use?” Or, “how often should I change my air filters?” Getting away from what type of filter you should use, the more important thing is that you’re changing your filters regularly. If you use 1” thick filters I like to recommend that you change your air filters once a month even if the filters say that they’re three month or ninety day filters. With the climate that we live in here in Texas the systems run a lot more frequently than in other parts of the country and the more the system runs the quicker the filter gets dirty. So therefore I always recommend changing the filter once a month.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that a dirty air filter can seriously impact the performance of your system in a negative way. The purpose of the air filter is to keep the air clean in your home and also to keep the system clean. When the system starts getting dirty from not changing your filters out regularly enough dirt starts accumulating on components that you really don’t want dirt accumulating on, like blower motors and evaporator coils, and the result is lower efficiency in your system. It causes the HVAC system to have to run longer to achieve the same results and what that means for you is you’re spending extra money on power bills that you otherwise wouldn’t need to spend.
There are a lot of things that affect how fast a filter will get dirty such as certain flooring like carpets, or pets and little kids as opposed to having tile or hardwood floors that don’t hold on to the dust and dirt as much. Regardless, with the climate that we live in, once a month is what I suggest would be a good time to change your air filters.
Another thing that I’d like to point out is that filters can still be dirty even when they appear to be clean. There are a lot of little things like white dust and mineral deposit that get into the air from stand alone humidifiers that cause the filter to get extremely loaded up and it can still visually appear clean, typically when that happens you’ll hear a whistling noise or the filter will tend to be a lot louder when the system gets turned on. That’s because it’s so loaded up that air is going around the filter instead of through it, so just stick to changing the filters once a month and you won’t have to worry.
Check out our blog post How To Change Your Air Filter or watch the video on youtube here.
