HVAC Lifespan Hacks & Air Filter Secrets |#AskDerekCole Episode 109

Hey, on this episode we're talking about the lifespan of your HVAC system and how often should I replace my air filter. You ask your comfort and energy questions and they get answered. This is the Ask Derrick Cole Show. Hello and welcome to episode 109 of the Ask Derek Cole Show answering your home and energy questions. We'll get right into it with question number 1: How long should my HVAC system last? Well, in this area of southeastern North Carolina, you're probably looking about 12 to 15 years of an average lifespan for your HVAC. The reason being is this is a moist damp, humid climate. We do a lot of AC. Every now and then we do heating. We have a few months of really cold weather, but mainly it's air conditioning. The enemy of your air conditioner is dirt. Dirt and growth seem to happen here quite a bit because we are in Southeast North Carolina. It's humid. The unit is in the crawl space. Or it's a package unit outside, it's damp. The coil is always going to be in a damp, dark place. Things are going to start to grow and things are going to start to build up. If you don't have prevention measures in place, it's going to wear and tear on the system. It's not going to last as long as you would like. So average around here is 12 to 15 years. Obviously with maintenance and with the right indoor air quality stuff to combat some of this growth, some of this dust, some of the dirt that is the enemy, it can last longer than the 12 to 15 years. So we go to— kind of a funny story. I went to a gentleman years ago and said, hey, I hope I get 25 years out of this new one. I said, it's not gonna happen. It is not gonna happen. Let me go ahead and, you know, burst the bubble. It is not going to happen. He said, why not? I said, well, look at your 25-year-old unit. You see that thick copper on it? He said, yeah. I said, today these units are made with either thin, thin copper or thin, thin aluminum to be efficient. Um, that thick copper is not in play anymore. He said, well, why not? I said, well, first of all, copper is very expensive. Uh, it's a great conductor of heat. Uh, heating and air is all about heat transfer, right? Uh, there's only degrees of heat, but copper is a great conductor of it. But the thick copper of the '70s and '80s, those systems are not going to happen anymore. That That install would be so expensive you would not want to do it, uh, and then you would go for a cheaper option, which will put us right back where we are, to a system that lasts 12 to 15 years, not one that lasts 25 or 30 years, right? So supply and demand, um, I mean, Americans are not gonna pay, uh, that price tag, that thick copper head on it back in the '70s and '80s, and they're not going to pay for that today. That's going to be unachievable with all the government regulations and efficiencies and refrigerants and, you know, all the stuff coming out. It's not even economical to look at that kind of solution because that refrigerant in the system by that time period as well would be out of date. Than today's refrigerants. So you get all these factors that kind of play into it, but 12 to 15 years is a good average. Second question, second question: how often should I change my air filter? Air filters, something I'm very passionate about. If y'all have seen anything on my social or anything on YouTube, I talk about changing your filters a lot. There's even a great video of me at Lowe's comparing filters, which filter should I use, because that's, that's confusing. But to answer that question, the simple answer is you should check it every month. You should change them every 1 to 3 months depending on use. It's kind of like looking at the size of your system. Everybody's a little bit different. You know, mainly it's me, my wife, our son comes in and out a couple times a day. That's it. We have a cat. If you go to a house that has, you know, 5 kids, a husband, a wife, and 2 dogs and 3 cats, and you know, their air filter is gonna be different than mine. Theirs is going to have a lot more traffic, outdoor environment, kids playing, kids coming in, kids going out, going to school, dogs, dog hair, cat hair. It's going to act differently than mine at home. So I would check them every month, every 30 days. It's very simple. I would just put something on my calendar. Or put some kind of alarm on my phone to say every 30 days, boom, at 8:30 PM, because I know I'm at home, you know, alarm goes off, it goes off at 8:30 every 30 days. I get up, I check the filter. If it needs to be changed, I change it. If it doesn't, I don't. Very simple. So make an alarm on your phone to make it easy to remember, but Every 30 days it should be checked. Every 1 to 3 months it should be replaced, depending on what your home wants to do. Your home is going to tell you what needs to happen with that air filter. Hope you enjoyed episode 109 of the Ask Derricole Show. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and hashtag it #AskDerricole. Bye-bye.