Air Filters that Clean Indoor Air
Filters to Help You Breathe Better at Home
Your HVAC system should be doing more than just providing you with a comfortable home. Your heating and cooling system should also be used to improve your home’s air quality.
Fortunately, there are many ways your system can improve the quality of the air inside your home. Fenix Heating & Cooling has helped homeowners and businesses across Wichita improve and maintain systems that greatly improve the quality of the air inside.
But even small efforts that homeowners can handle can make a big difference on improving indoor air quality. One of the most important ways to keep your air clean is something you should be doing regularly already – changing your air filter.
Top 2 Ways To Help Your Filter Improve Your Indoor Air
- Change it regularly.
Many homeowners underestimate how often their air filter needs to be changed. So, how often should you change your air filter? Unfortunately, it’s not a simple answer – at least it’s not the same answer for everyone. A standard 1-inch filter may only need to be changed about every 2-3 months or as often as every month. How often you need to change your filter depends on how you answer such questions as:
- Do you have pets?
- Does more than 1 person live in your house?
- Does anybody in the home suffer from allergies or asthma?
- Do you live in a polluted area?
The more questions you answered YES to, the more frequently you need to change your air filter. The best way to determine if it needs to be changed is simply to look at it. Pull it out and see if it’s dirty. Can you hold it up to the light and see light coming through it? If not, then it’s way past time to be changed.
- Use air filters designed to filter out the most hazardous particles, no matter how small they are. How do you know which filters can remove the most particles? The primary way is by referring to the MERV Rating. Getting an air filter with a higher MERV Rating means you have one that will do a better job at filtering out more particles AND smaller particles.
Understanding the MERV Rating
The MERV rating is a measurement of an air filter’s ability to remove particles. In our air, there are a variety of different particles such as dust, dirt, pollen and even viruses. Different types of particles are different sizes. For example, dust particles are larger than bacteria. Filters with higher MERV numbers are able to filter out smaller particles.
The filters you will choose for your home’s system will be rated at 16 and below. Filters rated at MERV 17 or higher are designed for surgical operating room or places that require an even more strict air filtration system.
Bigger is Not Always Better
While the higher MERV rating means a better filtration, that doesn’t actually mean it’s better for your home’s heating and air system. Your HVAC system may not be designed to handle very high MERV-rated filters. A filter works by creating resistance to air flow, and a MERV-rated filter that is too high for your system could keep it from functioning as well as it should.
MERV 5-8 can affectively restrict particles that are 3 – 10 microns large. That includes pollen, dust mites, carpet fibers, mold and dust.
MERV 9-12 can trap particles as small as 1-3 microns large. In addition to being affective fighting all the particles in smaller MERV rated filters, it can also trap such things as legionella, humidifier dust and lead dust.
MERV 11-16 is given to residential and commercial filters that can trap particles as small as 0.3 microns big. In addition to handling all the particles mentioned in smaller MERV ratings, these filters can help trap:
- Bacteria
- Tobacco smoke
- Auto fumes
- Sneeze particles
- Pet dander
Fenix Heating & Cooling is dedicated to installing the absolute best quality of HVAC systems and filters. For that reason, we only install the Lennox brand of heating, cooling and related HVAC products. In fact, we are a Lennox Premier Dealer here in the Wichita area. Lennox, a company that has been around for more than 100 years, has been proven to manufacture the most high-quality, energy-efficient and quietest furnaces and air conditioners.
You want to be sure that the filter you get doesn’t just filter out particles well, but that it still allows for proper air flow. You can trust a Lennox filter to do exactly that. Perhaps the best way to understand the impact air filters have on air flow is with the ping pong test. Watch this video to see a variety of different filters tested for airflow.
Breathe Easy AND Feel Comfortable
Whether your system works best with a MERV 11 or a MERV 16, contact Fenix Heating & Cooling for the air filter that will do the best job at both removing hazardous particles and maintaining proper airflow to keep you home feeling comfortable. Call us at (316) 945-4842 or send us a message online.
