Video: The Importance of Changing Your Furnace Filter

VACAVILLE — Leonard Oram: My name is Leonard Oram. I’m the install manager and I work for All Weather Heating and Air Conditioning. The technical tip that I’m going to talk about today is the filter changing of your furnace in your heating and air conditioning system. That is basically the most important thing you can do for your furnace. When you have a dirty filter, it puts extra strain on the blower motor inside the furnace, which in turn shortens the life of that motor and it also draws a little bit more energy, so you pay PG&E more. The other thing it does, by having a dirty filter, is you have less air going through your duct work, so you have less work that ends up entering into the rooms to heat or cool it. Thermostat takes longer to be satisfied, which means your furnace or air conditioner runs longer. And the end result is you pay your utility company more money.

So, it’s just easier to change your filter on the front end and not have to pay your utility company more money on the back end. I’ve had systems that break, and they just break and don’t work anymore because of dirty filters. The normal is one to three months. Most people in the northern California area, especially during the summertime, are probably changing it every month because of the dusty area. It just gets super-dirty and slows the airflow down. It also can create some big air conditioning problems in the summertime by freezing the system up, and the end result is you could have an air conditioner that dies because the compressor blew up. There’s just so many bad things that can happen with a dirty filter, if it gets too dirty, that you can spend a lot of money replacing the parts that break.