Monday, February 4, 2008

Change #7 - Cleaning our furnace filter every 60 days

In November of 2006 we had the air ducts of our house cleaned. I was pregnant at the time and suffering from severe environmental allergies. Because I was pregnant, I couldn’t take the usual allergy medications. We thought getting the ducts cleaned might help. The dude who did the cleaning sold us on a ‘Super-Duper-Allergy-Buster-Dust-Free-Gold' filter for the furnace. The filter was expensive ($159) but it is a permanent one and has a lifetime warranty. Plus, instead of replacing our furnace filter with a disposable one every few months we can just clean this one and keep reusing it indefinitely (fewer filters in the landfill is a good thing).

I am just looking over the care instructions for the filter now and it recommends that you clean it every 30-60 days. Um. Since November 2006 I think our filter has been cleaned I would say an absolute maximum of three maybe four times (unless Derek has been sneaking around and cleaning it behind my back which is very unlikely). So our change this week is to start cleaning our filter every 60 days (I would say 30, but let’s face it that just isn’t going to happen).

Cleaning our furnace filter more regularly will 1) hopefully save energy by making our furnace more efficient (I’m not sure that’s true but I’m sure it can’t hurt) 2) will help keep the air in our house clean (especially important considering how close we live to the 417 and Bus Station) 3) the fact that it's a permanent filter is already pretty 'green'.

Thanks for the suggestion on this one Lianne. (This post comes early because we are away this weekend).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Even though we're in the business of selling replacement filters, it's still good to see real-world examples on the value of furnace filters and clean air.

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