A dirty air filter in your home can have serious consequences. It reduces airflow to the HVAC system, making it work harder and use more energy, which costs you more money. It can also make it difficult to keep your home at the right temperature. Worse yet, a clogged air filter can allow contaminants to enter the air that everyone in your home breathes, leading to immediate problems like headaches, itchy eyes or throat, and dizziness.
In the long-term, it can even lead to respiratory disease, heart disease, or cancer. Homeowners who ignore their air filters in their heating and air conditioning systems risk increasing energy costs, damaging expensive equipment, and decreasing indoor air quality and personal health. Read on to learn what can happen if you don't change your air filters. The danger of not changing the air filter in the house for a long time is that it will eventually lead to damage to the HVAC system. Excess heat will cause the entire system to break down. When you change your air conditioning filter every month during peak cooling season, you can save about 15% each month on utilities, as well as avoid repair problems due to airflow restrictions. Air filters are generally made of spun fiberglass or pleated paper and are surrounded by a cardboard frame.
They block things like dust, pollen, lint, mold, hair, animal fur, bacteria and more. If not changed regularly, the air filter can become clogged with these particles, leading to frozen evaporator coils that result from a clogged air filter and cause the air conditioner to break down. If the air conditioner sits around the coils, then you are heating or cooling the same air and not pushing it through the ducts. If you haven't changed your home's air filters lately, the next step should be to determine which filters you need and replace them as soon as possible.
Most filters are located in areas that can be easily accessed; all you need is to remove the old one and put on a new one. If you don't replace the air filters for a long time, you will eventually experience evaporator coil failures. However, once you start to notice that the HVAC doesn't cool the house the way it's supposed to, you may need to replace the filters. With a clogged air filter, air will not flow through the coils properly, causing them to stop working and causing total system failure. With a clean air filter, expect to increase the uptime of your HVAC system and change the air temperature in small increments. If you have any questions about what type of filter is best for your system or how often you should change it, please contact us. Getting the most value out of your home can be as easy as changing air filters.
If you haven't done so already, make sure to replace your home's air filters regularly for optimal performance.
