How often should I change my air filters in my house?
That's an excellent question and we're going to talk about that today.
Hi there. I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question
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Now onto today's show which is about how often do I change my air filters?
That's an excellent question and it comes down to all air filters are not created equal.
I'm going to show you a couple of air conditioning filters that we can take a look at today and
then you can decide which is going to be best for you and how often you're going to need
to change those based on your lifestyle.
So the very first thing that we have to look at is, what does an air filter do?
Well an air filter filters out dust, airborne pathogens, dust mites, it's going to be bacteria,
let's say that somebody in your house is coughing and sneezing,
that stuff circulates through the air.
So when the air conditioning unit or the heater kicks on and off,
air is sucked in and out of your house.
As it's sucked in and out and it circulates throughout your house, we breathe a lot of that stuff.
So in our bodies we have a built in air filter and it's our lungs and our lungs
filter in the air that we breathe through our nose and our mouth.
And so if you are constantly taking in all this gunk, then yeah your body's gets sick
and you get what we know as allergies.
So if there are known allergens in your house which are like dust, dust mites, pet dander,
things like that, then we want to filter those out.
So instead of relying on our bodies to filter all that stuff, we have the help of air filters
which filter it out in the air that we breathe inside our homes.
Alright, so let's take a look at a couple of air filters, shall we?
I have some here that I would like to share with you and the first one here is green and
it's made of a fiberglass like material and you can see through it.
It's not very thick and so this is going to be on the cheaper side and there are cheap
ones and then there are ones that are fairly expensive and I say fairly expensive for an
air filter, but what are you getting.
If you're getting better health and it's removing all that stuff from your lungs so that you
don't have to breathe that inside your body, it's well worth the price.
So instead of just going with super cheap ones,
my suggestion would be get one that's
going to do the job.
Okay, so now this one is pretty thin.
It does have a full coverage, so it is going to trap some kind of air particles and pet
dander and stuff like that, so it is good, but you'll have to change it more frequently
because it's so thin.
Alright, the next one that I have is a little bit ... and they come in all different sizes
and shapes.
This is a little bit different in that it has these like little pouches so it's going
to catch dust at a different level and then as it sucks the air in, and this is when the
air conditioning unit kicks on and off and the air goes in and out, it's going to gather
a lot of that stuff and it's going to stick to your air filter and that's why we change it.
Now on the bottom of this there's a little arrow and the arrow will show you which way
you're going to plug that into your air vent so there's a little grate, you open the grate
and you take the vent out and then you put the next vent in.
And like I say, it will show you which direction it goes, so this is a do it yourself project.
This is something you can do at home.
If you're a professional house cleaner, this might be an up sell service where you say
every three months or whatever we will change the air filters in your house and then the
customer can order them let's say for example on Amazon and just have them shipped via Prime
so they're not paying for the shipping every time, have them shipped to the house waiting
for you so you can pop in the air filters when you get to their house.
But it is ... this is a little bit thicker.
You cannot see through it.
It's made of some kind of a fiber that's heavier and it looks like it's going to do a better job.
Alright now this is like the mac daddy where it is completely covered.
I can't see through it at all.
It has multiple little ridges on it and they're much closer together, so as you have a filter
like this, everything that it catches, it's going to catch and it is not getting through here.
It's just going to absorb it right here.
It staying right here and so because this is a heavy duty one, you might not have to
replace this for several months.
Alright so the general rule of thumb is this, you should change your air filters if you
have a really good one, every three to six months and that is if you are a solo person.
You live by yourself or you have a vacation house, so you don't need to change it very
often if there are no pets, you're never at home, whatever.
There's not a whole lot of stuff happening inside the house.
Now if you're a family and you have lots of people coming and going and the doors are
opening and closing and whatever and the house is lived in frequently then you want to change
your air filters, even if they're really heavy duty, probably every three months.
That would be a really good time frame to change your filters.
Now if you throw pets into the mix, that's where it gets a little bit interesting.
If you have one pet, I would change it every two months because now you have pet dander
and you have the pet coming in and out and bringing things in on its fur that you would
not normally have if it were just people.
So if you're opening and closing doors and you have animals coming and going,
probably every two months and for every pet you have thereafter,
I would change it then every one month.
So, every 30 days if you have more than two pets because that way you're going to get
a lot more stuff in your house.
So what we're looking at preventing and taking out of the airwaves are allergens, mold, bacteria
from sickness, coughing, sneezing, dust, dust mites.
We're looking at taking all that stuff out of the air that circulates in the air that
we breathe.
If we can create a clean environment to live in and this goes along with house cleaning,
where we remove the dust and we vacuum regularly, and things like that, that is going to keep
our lungs functioning at a much higher level.
And so if your lungs are functioning, that means your eyes are clear.
That means your nose is clear and that you can breathe and breathing, according to the
American Lung Association, is the only thing that matters.
When you can't breathe nothing else matters and it's kind of a catchy slogan but it makes
a lot of sense when you think about it.
If you can't breathe you die, right?
So, keeping the air that we breathe clean is paramount.
And so how often do you clean your air filters? Regularly. Regularly.
And get the high end air filters so that you have a better chance of filtering all that
stuff out because what we're talking about is your body
and if your body is healthy then you're well.
You function better. You're able to think more clearly.
You're able to be more effective and you feel better and when you feel better you're more productive.
So, something as small as an air filter in your house can make all the difference and
so if you have pets, do it on a regular basis, every month or so.
If you don't have pets and you rarely use your house and it's a vacation home or it's
a bed and breakfast or something and it's not getting a lot of use, maybe every three
to six months.
You don't need it as often, but make sure that it's on a schedule and make it on your
calendar so that you know when you're going to change those air filters and don't go a
year in between because then that's when everything gets clogged up.
And if you've ever had a clogged drain, how the water backs up, and it's not functioning
properly, when your air filters get clogged up, it's a whole lot like that clogged drain.
The air unit doesn't work as properly.
The heating doesn't work as properly.
Nothing works as properly and then you're breathing that stuff that's not getting filtered
out through your air filters.
Alrighty, so that's my two cents for today and until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place then when you found it.
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