One of the best ways to help improve the air quality in your home if it feels dusty and stale is to install an air filtration system. Unfortunately, this can cause people some confusion because they assume their house already has an air filtration system: the air filter on the HVAC cabinet that they need to change regularly when it gets too dirty.
But this filter isn’t doing the job of improving your air quality. It serves another purpose. If you want better indoor air quality (IAQ), you’ll need to look to dedicated IAQ devices.
So What’s the Air Filter For?
The air filter on your HVAC system, which we’ll refer to as the blower filter from this point on, does the job of protecting the interior of the HVAC cabinet and its components, such as the AC, furnace, and blower. The blower draws air through the home’s return air ducts to move it through the HVAC system, and a great deal of dust, lint, dander, and other debris will get drawn in with that air. If these airborne contaminants enter the HVAC cabinet, they’ll harm moving parts, block the condensate coil, cover the burners in grime, clog up the condensate drain, and more. When you change the filter every one to three months, take a look at how dirty it is and imagine all that getting into the part of your AC and heater!
Does the Blower Filter Have Any Impact on Air Quality?
A bit, but not much. The accumulation you see in the filter when you change it may look impressive, but that’s only a fraction of what actually circulates through your house regularly. The air quality would be worse without this filter, but if you’re looking to make a difference in the quality of the air you and your family breathe, you need more powerful options.
How Does a Whole-House Air Filter Work?
A whole-house air filter works on the same principle as a standard blower filter: capturing particles in a physical media. But whole-house filters can be much more powerful than a 1” blower filter. Whole-house air filters can have several layers of filtration that provide better defense against minute particles. In order to fit the larger filter housing into the HVAC system, HVAC technicians must plumb the casing for the filter into the ductwork itself. You can then directly change the filter by sliding out an old one and sliding a new one in its place.
What if a Whole-House Air Filter Still Doesn’t Do the Job?
Although a whole-house air filter will improve air quality in your home, you still may have trouble with small contaminants that can get through the strongest filter that will work with the HVAC system. These particles include gasses, odor molecules, bacteria, microbes, and volatile organic compounds. To handle these airborne contaminants, we recommend you also have an air purifier in Conroe, TX installed to work with the filter. The purifier uses electronic means to nullify or remove the particles the filter can’t stop. The right filter/purifier combination can eliminate more than 98% of unwanted particles from a home’s air.
Talk to us today about finding the best indoor air quality solutions for you.
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