As a responsible homeowner, you hire an air conditioner repair services provider every few months to clean the air filter and fix any issues within your appliance. While this is good for your appliance and your home, have you asked yourself, what happens when you don’t change the AC filter?
Well, plenty of things can happen, with the most common ones being:
The AC will function inefficiently
The AC filters are meant to filter the air getting into the system, so when you go for a long time without cleaning or replacing the air filters, it’s a matter of time before the AC fails and stops filtering the air as well as it used to.
What is the consequence of this? Dust gets into the inner parts of the air conditioner, such as the fan motors and valves. When these parts are caked in dust, they don’t move or work as well as they should, and this causes the air conditioner to function inefficiently, so you have high energy bills at the end of every month.
Mold infests your home
This is often common when you have installed HEPA filters. When you don’t replace the higher efficiency filters as regularly as you should, moisture can build up, causing mold to accumulate in the ducts, leading to serious mold infestations.
Dust will accumulate in the house.
AC professionals report that the air in the AC filters through the system 5-7 times a day. As you can imagine, this is a lot of circulation, and since the air filters aren’t working as well as they are supposed to, the AC ends up bringing pollen, mold, and even germs into the house.
The entire AC will stop working.
When you continually ignore the AC filters, it’s a matter of time before all the air conditioner parts are covered with dust, and they stop moving. Even if they move, they will do so slowly, and this will wear out the mechanics of the air conditioner.
How do you change the air conditioner air filters?
To avoid the repercussions that come with failing to clean or replace the air filters, you should change them as regularly as possible. The beauty is you don’t need to hire a professional to help with it.
To effectively clean or replace the air filters, you need to follow a three-step process:
Locate the air filter
You can’t clean or replace the air filters if you don’t have access to them, can you? So the first thing you should do is to identify the air filter’s location, which varies depending on the model of your appliance.
In some appliances, the filters are located in the return air ducts. If your system handles heating and cooling, you will find the air filters in or near the blower system. The air filter can be open or covered by a metal panel labeled “filter.”
Find the replacement filter.
After locating the filter and removing it from its compartment, you should now find a replacement filter. For the new filter to function optimally, you need to ensure that it is a replica of the previous one.
The filter’s size is the most important thing to pay attention to, so you need to ensure that you don’t get the wrongly sized unit. Thankfully, it’s easy to tell the size of the filter as all you need to do is to check the side of the screen that is already in place.
If you have the resources, don’t go for an ordinary air filter. Instead, go for a HEPA filter that will filter out as many dust particles as possible and at the same time catch allergens that can cause allergies.
Replace
Once you have your replacement filter, all you need to do is to replace the air filter. Access the filter panel and slide out the old filter, and put in the new filter.
As you place the new filter, pay attention to the arrow and ensure that it points away from the return air duct.
Is this the first time replacing the air filter?
If this is your first time replacing or cleaning the air filter and you aren’t confident in your skills, let a professional air conditioning repair services McLean help you out.
