Derek Cole, an HVAC technician, explains how to pick the right home air filter. Your system's duct design and tightness determine which MERV rating it can handle. High-efficiency filters can restrict airflow and damage your unit, so have a technician check during annual maintenance.
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You should use the best filter for your home. And let me explain this, it's kind of hard to understand. It depends on your house and your duct system as to which filter you need. Now I do always recommend air cleaning, which is a different type of filtration than a filter. But if you're going to use a filter, you want it to be the right one. Now you go to the box store, they got like two, two rows of filters. I'm sorry, two aisles of filters. Really? Because you got the cheap one for like a dollar and then you got like the thirty, fifty dollar filters. You're like, well, that one must be better because it's that much. Your system will determine what filter it can handle. So. So if you have a tight home, a newer home, and it's a tight construction, energy efficient construction, and your duct system is tight, then putting a really high MERV rated filter in that system could cause more problems than good. So you could put in a filter that stops up the airflow, which is a problem. The other side of the spectrum is a cheaper filter or a cheap filter, 80 cent dollar filter you put in there and it's not very good at all because, you know, only thing it's stopping is sandwich bags and Coke cans and anything else you throw at it. Yeah, it's 100% efficient at stopping that. But 98% of what we're trying to stop are the particles you cannot see. So if you look at your TV or your cabinet and you see dust on it, we're not trying to filter that because it's so heavy it's sitting there. You're trying to filter the particles in the air that are coming through and those you cannot see. Once you get into air cleaning, then you actually stop filtration and go into air cleaning. And the reason you want to do that is because now you're getting the small particles you cannot see and you're not stopping up your duct system. So if you go to the filter on the return grill and it's too tight and the filter gets soaked in, then the filter is too much for that system to handle. So you need to go down in filters. The best thing to do is get the technician when he does your maintenance every year is to check your system and recommend what filter is better for you. Because some are good, some are bad. It really depends on your situation.
