The Smart Way To Save

BEAT THE SUMMER HIGH ENERGY BILLS

According to the EPA's Energy Star, as much as half your home's total energy consumption comes from the Air Conditioner (A/C) system and for it to perform at the best and most efficient regime, an unobstructed, free flowing evaporator is critical. Keeping your A/C's evaporator clean of all the particulate matter that normally floats in every home is the job of the high efficiency filters that we build and sell here at Factory Direct Filters.

A frequent recommendation from your HVAC technician is to frequently change your filter because this keeps your system's heat exchanging areas free of costly, hard to remove deposits that severely impair the system's cooling function. A dirty evaporator is less efficient because you have to move more air through it to turn out less cooled air.

Unless you or someone in your home requires special filtration needs, avoiding this situation is simply a matter of choosing a filter with the correct filtering efficiency (measured by their MERV rating) for your home's desired ambient conditions. But a usage regime that increases substantially by summer's high outside temperatures calls for a rethinking of the depth of filtration versus frequency of filter changing equation.

Summer's heat brings not only an increase in the ambient temps your A/C system has to fight but also an increase on rain and dust trapping humidity, thus the floating particulate concentrations tends to be lower both outside and inside your home.

Energy Star's recommendation on air filter change frequency is once a month but we have found that under a high usage, low outside particulate ingestion risk season, a combination of reducing the MERV rating of your system's filters and doubling the frequency of their change (in this example to twice a month or every two weeks) is more favorable to your system's flow mechanics as your blower fan will be less taxed, but also negating the evaporator dirt build up risk by exchanging the derated air filter more frequently. As your evaporator and ventilation system's breathe more freely, the amount of electricity they consume is reduced in a much steeper rate than the cost of the extra filters.

You should also remember:

• If you don’t have any special filtration needs (allergies, etc), consider doubling your filter change frequency.
• Lower MERV ratings allow for less “breathing” restriction to your A/C system.
• Downgrading your filtration MERV rating isn’t as risky in the summer.
• If you downgrade you should ALWAYS double your filter change frequency.