Photo from Choice Home Warranty
Are you or a member of your household suffering from coughing, sneezing, running nose, allergic reactions, and breathing problems? If you've answered in the affirmative, it might be time to look at the condition of your furnace's air filter.
Unknown to many, the indoors of homes are prone to immense air pollution. If you live in a home that has many residents, including pets, the residents will inevitably be tracking dust and other contaminants into the house. And if you're spending plenty of time indoors with the windows closed, you are bound to inhale the dirt with the result that you'll suffer from the conditions we've highlighted above.
This is quite unfortunate because the air filters in your home can clean the air to ensure all the harmful particles are kept at bay. However, for the air filter to perform its duties, it needs to be in the best possible condition. That's why you need to ensure that your air filters are replaced at the right time.
Read on to find out why replacing your air filters is necessary.
Benefits of American Standard Air Filter Replacement
While the presence of quality air in a home is paramount for the comfort and health of the residents, there are other reasons why you should always ensure that your filters are working efficiently.
Replacing Air Filters Increases the Longevity of your HVAC Unit
HVAC units don't come cheap, and as a prudent homeowner, you want to make sure that yours lasts as long as possible. Air filters are supposed to clean the HVAC unit, but they can't do so when choking in the dirt. When the filter is fully covered in grime, the dirt that should have collected on it ends up on other HVAC unit components, which could get damaged.
Photo from Homedit
Ultimately, a unit that would have given you many years of good service has to be replaced at a prohibitive cost which you could avoid by simply changing the filters as recommended. While changing filters is a straightforward process, it's a crucial part of your unit's preventative maintenance.
American Standard Air Filter Replacement Saves Energy
In an age when we're constantly reminded of the need to save energy and reduce our carbon footprint, you'll be pleased to learn that you're playing your part in this crucial crusade by changing your filters. While clean American Standard furnace filters ensure that your system is working at optimum capacity, clogged filters force the HVAC unit to work extra-hard. An overworked system consumes more significant amounts of energy, and you should not be too surprised to find yourself slapped with an unexpected energy bill.
Air Filter Replacement Prevents Breakages
When your HVAC unit is not working well, many things can go wrong. The system could, for instance, fail to deliver the correct temperature or start producing strange noises. These are reasons that would make you call a technician, and you know that every visit comes with a repair expense. The repairs might seem minor, but the costs add up with time. Regular changing filters costs little and will help you avoid most repair expenses.
Air Filter Replacement Makes Your Home Feel Cleaner
When your air filter is covered in dust and grime, it'll inevitably circulate these undesirable elements around your house. Despite your best efforts at vacuuming and dusting, you'll notice that dust collects quickly in the place when the filter is dirty. You can, therefore, improve your home's general cleanliness by ensuring that your air filter is clean.
Photo from Home Depot
How Frequently Should You Conduct American Standard Air Filter Replacement?
Given the many advantages of operating with a clean filter, you must be wondering about how frequently you need to replace yours. The first thing you need to think about before deciding on the frequency of replacement is the location of your home. As you can expect, people who live in highly dusty places will need to replace their filters sooner than people in less dusty areas.
If you have pets in your home, you should remember that these beloved members of your family also release pet hair which adds to the contaminants in the air. You should also consider changing the filters more frequently if you have many residents in your home, as a larger population usually means larger dirt deposits.
It'd be prudent to change filters at least once a month for people in dusty areas and those whose homes house many residents. Regardless of your location or the number of residents in your home, you must make sure that you do the replacement at least once in three months.
Can You Replace Your American Standard Air Filter on Your Own?
Replacing your air filter is easy, and you can do it without outside help. However, before embarking on this task, you need to be sure that you're using the recommended filter. Should you use a filter that is not ideal for your furnace, you're likely to damage your system. To find out which filter to use, you should look at the recommendations in your HVAC unit manual.
Once you've purchased the right filter, you should turn off the furnace before removing the old filter. Filters are designed to slide off the furnace, and removing them is never daunting. Inserting the new filter is equally easy as you need to slide it into the space where you extracted the used filter.
Conclusion
Regular American Standard air filter replacement comes with a host of benefits. In addition to improving the air quality in a home and therefore guaranteeing the residents' good health, it's preventative maintenance, which will ultimately save you money.