We all know that a furnace filter is a removable part that installs in line to trap the dust, hair and other things that are in your air before they get sucked into the air vent of the system. This prevents them from ending up inside the mechanical parts of the furnace where they can cause major damage to the entire furnace system.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that there is a huge amount of difference between the various types of filters currently on the market. There are paper filters, fiberglass filters, HEPA filters, pleated filters and electrostatic filters. You can even get filters that can impart a pleasant smell or perfume to your home so that everything smells nice and fresh. Almost like a whole house air freshener if you will.
Inside each of these categories there are also different sub types and the costs can vary from considerably less than a dollar each to twenty and thirty dollars for replaceable and throw away filters. As you might imagine, this necessitates that the person take a good look into what they are getting before they actually purchase because over the course of several years, the cost of these replacement parts can get quite high.
When it comes to locating the best styles and brands, you have to take into consideration the make and model of your furnace because not every brand or style of filter is going to fit into every unit. The actual physical sizes and the depths of the filters and filter holders are just a couple of things that need to be examined and taken into consideration.
Next, you need to decide the style that you want and how often you intend on change those filters. Under normal situations, once every thirty days is sufficient. However if you have a lot of long haired pets or live in a very dusty location, you might want to consider changing your filter more often.
Some people actually opt for using the less expensive filters and changing them more frequently. But you need to consider the efficiency of the units. A standard, cheap fiberglass filter for example, has an efficiency rating of between and 10 and 15 percent. If you move into the electrostatic filters you can expect that efficiency to increase to 90 percent. And that’s a very meaningful increase indeed.
People have come to think about Carrier filters as the standard of the industry. The name Carrier is synonymous with quality in the heating and air conditioning industry and it is no different with the filters that they produce. When a company specializes in something, they tend to do it better than a company that tries to do everything.
If you opt to stay with the traditional style of filters, you will find that, inch-by-inch, the pleated models do the best job of capturing the things out of the air that you don’t want there and also that they balance performance fairly well with cost. To get the best results, change them on a regular schedule to keep the system operating at peak performance efficiency and it will save you money in the long run.
