Why You Need To Stop Using These Filters To Purify Your Air! What To Use Instead

home owners really need to stop using air filters like this one here in order to purify the air in their house but in this video I'll talk more about what I mean by that how this could actually be damaging your system costing you more money and really not doing the job that you think that it's doing and I'll also be talking about some things that you should be doing and using so let's go ahead and Jump Right In All right so this filter right here is probably one of the most common if not the most common filter that a lot of homeowners are buying because this filter advertises that not only will it get rid of your normal household dust which is really what a filter is mainly trying to do is trying to keep the dust and some of those larger particulates from getting up into your air handler but if we look up close on this air filter a lot of this just feels like a no-brainer why would I not want to buy this why would I not want to pay the extra money to have this better filter because again this filter not only removes things from the air like lint and household dust but it also removes things like dust mite debris mold spores pollen that is a big one for a lot of people that's what they're looking for it also advertises that it will remove pet dander smoke that's another big one smog particulates cough and sneeze debris bacteria and viruses and I think these three right here also play on the people's emotions as to whether or not to buy one of these filters so of course pretty much everybody wants to avoid all of these things that are listed and if you buy a more expensive filter than even this one is you get a higher Merve rating which we'll get into in just a second they can remove things like candle soot pm2.5 exhaust particles and ultra fine particles and it also advertises that this lasts up to 3 months which can also be very deceiving and we'll get into a little bit of that now you see here where this says 1,500 that is the microparticle performance rating but what most of you are probably more familiar with and I haven't really seen anywhere on this unless I'm missing it is what is called a mer rating and a mve rating is the minimum efficiency reporting value so you'll have anything from a MV one all the way up to mve 13 14 and it even goes higher than that and the higher that mve rating is the denser the filter is and the more capable it is of removing things from the air but the problem is when you get these sticker filters that are able to remove some of or all of the things that they advertise that they can remove again it also makes the air that's trying to p pass through this filter it's going to suffocate it a little bit to where it's not able to pass through it as freely whereas if you install a filter like this where you can see clearly through the filter you can see the filter underneath of it this is a MV one this is a pretty much as low as it gets as far as Merv rating which this filter is a MV 12 but a lot of AC contractors will tell you that this is all that they put in the AC unit all they're concerned about is removing enough things from the air in order to help your unit run as efficiently as possible and last as long as possible and these are also incredibly inexpensive where you can get like four pack of these for a fraction of the price of this one right here at about five or six bucks whereas this filter right here can run you anywhere from about $18 all the way up to I've seen $8 and $40 depending on the size and how popular that size is so these can be quite expensive and not just in the short term by restricting that air flow your unit's not able to run as efficiently it's making it work harder Therefore your unit's going to have to run more it's going to have to run more often in order to get the air cooled down and as this is installed even though this says it lasts up to 3 months as soon as you install this and this starts grabbing all that stuff out of the air that density gets thicker and thicker so it becomes even harder for the air to run through it the dirtier this gets so no chance in the world would I ever let especially this particular filter sit in my unit for around 3 months because again you're going to be paying more on your electric bill due to your unit having to run more and more often and you also run the risk since you're putting more strain on the unit itself of having something actually go wrong with the unit and having to call an AC guy out to do at the minimum a service call to let you know what's going on or actually have to fix and replace something so what is my personal recommendation when it comes to what filter to select well for one thing for me personally I don't necessarily recommend using this even though like I said the AC guys this is what they typically are installing in a lot of units it can be used I like something that has a little bit more protection than just this MV one rating but this is an option and probably one that I would actually take over using this one so for me personally what I use is anywhere from a MV five to a maximum of a mv8 and in a pleated filter this is what I use now this is a dirty one that I just removed from my unit but as you can see it's a pleated filter I believe this particular one is a MV 6 it would be more see-through if it wasn't used but this is what I use so again anywhere from a six through an eight I would say 10 at the absolute most but in my opinion I don't think you get enough from installing a 10 over an eight to justify the extra work your AC unit's going to have to do and this particular filter along with anything up to an eight typically are not going to remove things or they're not going to remove as much of things like pollen they will remove some of them but it's not going to be as efficient as this filter right here to removing things like pollen smoke pet dander things like that and as someone who definitely does suffer from allergies I can totally relate with people that are wanting to buy this for those particular reasons so what do I recommend and actually personally use and have used for many many years in order to get the air of my house clean this and variations of this are what I personally use and have been using for a number of years this is an actual air purifier it uses very little electricity it has a HEPA filter in it which is actually going to filter out way more than those filters that you're putting in your air handler and also in this particular unit the HEPA filter on the inside of it also has charcoal and what that charcoal does is it removes those voc's out of the air which are volatile organic compounds your voc's are typically gases and chemicals a lot of times if you have a funny smell in your house it can be coming from the voc's uh this also is going to do a great job and has done a great job of any smoke that's in the air it just removes it out of the air and like I said this has a HEPA filter which is going to remove all of those things that are listed on that higher mve rating of a filter that's going in air handlers it's going to remove all of that and more it's just a much denser filter that's able to remove way more out of the air than even those more expensive filters that you're putting in your air handler if you were to put a HEPA filter in your air handler that thing would be suffocating for air and would really be putting you at risk for causing a lot of issues so this one's my smallest air purifier this is in my master bedroom whereas I have a little bit larger one that's the same brand and type as this that's in my office it's a little bit larger because I wanted to clean up a little bit more air than this is capable of cleaning up and then my largest one which is the hospital grade one is in the living room which is then cleaning even that much more air so the bigger the unit typically the more square footage of air it's able to turn over or to purify and a lot of these devices are very smart to where the fan is not really running a whole lot when it's not detecting a whole lot of stuff in the air that it needs to remove and then when it starts detecting a higher level of voc's or pollen or dust or dirt it's going to detect that and it's going to raise the fans so that it purifies that air as quickly as possible so let me show you a little bit about how this works all right so up here on the top of the unit you see we have this display here and there's a lot of different options now what this is telling us is how pure the air is in this particular room or what it's detecting with it only being one and this circle being blue what it's showing is that the air is pretty clean right here whereas when it starts turning green and then all the way up to red and some other colors it's starting to detect particulates in the air that it needs to remove it and since it's in auto mode right here which is what this symbol is right here it's going to detect that and it's automatically going to boost up the fan speed in order to start pulling air through it more and purifying that air a whole lot faster so we can get it as clean as possible as quickly as possible here on the back side now this is all the way around where you've got these perforations this is where the air is being pulled into and then pulled up into here to then filter it and then of course out the top this right here they call this the air sight plus and what this does this is where the sensor is that sensing the particulates or the smoke or the voc's that are in the air that's what then UPS the fan speed to then clean the air faster all right so let me show you really quickly how this works so this is inside of the app which is connected to this unit and any other units you might have in your house with this brand and as you can see it's saying the air quality is very good it's at a one so the way I'm going to show you this is by taking this candle and when I blow this out we're going to have some smoke the sensor is going to sense it and we're going to see this number climb and we're also going to hear the unit kick up the fan speed to purify the air the fan is starting to kick up that just got that message letting me know that the air quality is bad so it's kicking up the fan speed we're up to over 400 and you can see up here on the top of the unit it is also showing whatever the air quality is on the top of the unit on this display here and as it's cleaning the air we're coming down a little bit now we're at 286 and now it's showing that we're back to having good quality air that the air has been completely cleaned up and this fan speed will start to come down now so not only does it show what the air quality is inside of the house but it's also letting you know the air quality that's outside for that particular day so for today it's showing that we have a level of three and that the pollen is high today there are a bunch of other items in the options in the app such as your filter life you have this setting down at the bottom which is air quality notification that's that notification that I got on my phone that the air quality is bad and then once it return back to normal I also got a notification letting me know that the air is clean again back here towards the beginning you also have this option here which is display lock I always turn that on so my kids can't just mess with all the settings on the unit itself and then you you can just change some of your settings in here like as far as how quiet you want the unit to be and then the square footage of the room it's in so it knows how efficiently it needs to run for that particular size of room and there's a bunch of other options in this app I'm not going to go over everything otherwise this video will be incredibly long and this is not meant to be an advertisement just kind of showing you what I use and why and how well it works so obviously I definitely recommend these units I was not sent these for free I was not paid to do this video I bought these with my own money because in my opinion they're by far the best units on the market especially for the price and I wanted to show you guys what I have found to work incredibly well instead of using those higher Merv rated filters that are going to cost you a lot of money in the short term and the long run so if you found any of these units to be of interest to you everything that you saw in this video I have links for this and everything else down in the description down below when you click on those links it'll take you directly to whatever you clicked on so you can check them out for yourself so if you do find Value in that then you'll definitely find Value in a video that I did in the past where I go over some of the top things that a lot of AC companies don't really want you to know that you're capable of doing or that you're even allowed to do them they are some of the most common repairs and maintenance items that you're going to come across whether it comes down to having a problem with your AC unit or just some maintenance items if you're interested in learning more about some of those top things that go wrong with an AC unit and a little bit about how to fix them or take care of them then click on this video right over here when you click on it it will take you directly to it so I hope that you did find Value in this and if you did if you can do me a huge favor hit that thumbs up button right down below and of course if you have any questions or comments still you can leave those down in the comment section and I'll catch you all in the next one see you

Channel: How To Home

Views: 642,932

Keywords: AC Air Filter, Air Purifier, MERV, Furnace Filter, Furnace Filter Replacement, What MERV Rating, Should I use high MERV Rated Filters

Id: 6PcBk2umEWA

Length: 12min 17sec (737 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 06 2024