Why Your Air Conditioner Needs a Clean Filter
Do you know the key to achieving and maintaining a truly great cooling performance? There’s a hint buried in that question: maintaining. If you are serious about getting the very best performance that your home cooling system has to offer, then you absolutely must schedule routine air conditioning maintenance. Even professional maintenance alone is not really enough to get the most out of your AC, though. That is because maintenance happens annually, and your air filter needs changing more frequently than that.
Now, we know what you’re thinking. My air conditioner is working just fine. I schedule maintenance. There’s no way that simply changing a filter is that important. Well, we are the North Dallas AC experts that homeowners around here know that they can trust, and we really need to stress just how vital a fresh filter is! Believe it or not, and hopefully you will after reading this post, failure to keep a fresh filter in place can really set your AC and your back.
What Does the Air Filter Do?
I’m no air conditioning expert, admittedly, but come on—it filters the air!
Yes, that is correct. The standard air filter in your air conditioning system is there to filter the air passing through it. The confusion surrounding such air filters is not really what the filter does, though, but rather why it does it. The filter filters the air, but it does not do so in order to boost indoor air quality throughout the house. Not primarily, anyway. You need a designated air filter if you really need to improve the quality of the air that you breathe.
Instead, this air filter cleans the air to prevent problems with your air conditioner itself. When dust and dirt build up on sensitive components within that system, it can cause a lot of problems. Just having a filter in place won’t help you to really avoid problems, though. That’s only possible with a clean air filter in place, and you’ll typically need to change that filter every 1-3 months to keep everything operating optimally.
Problems Caused by Dirty Filters
The issues caused by dirty air filters are many. You can expect:
- Reduced energy efficiency, as the system has to work harder than it should in order to force air through that dirty filter. That will likely result in you paying more for a lesser cooling experience.
- Increased wear and tear on the system, as it suffers excessive strain due to the restricted airflow caused by the dirty filter. This makes the need for air conditioning repairs more likely.
- Short cycling, wherein your system will start up, run only very briefly, and then cycle back down. This is due to the system protecting itself from overheating. If the coil should freeze up due to insufficient airflow, the problem will be compounded.
If you want a great AC performance, you simply cannot overlook the need for a fresh air filter.
Schedule your AC services with Frymire Home Services. A Higher Degree of Comfort.
