You know what cholesterol is, right? It’s the nasty stuff that can build up in your arteries over time. Your home’s air filter works the same way. Sort of.

Let’s pretend your home is like the human body.

All parts of the body have a unique role to play. They also affect other body parts, not to mention your overall health. Your home, believe it or not, operates in much the same way.

If your HVAC equipment is like your heart, your air filters can be like cholesterol – a foreign “substance” that you’ve introduced to the body. This isn’t always the case (more on why some air filters aren’t like cholesterol in just a moment), but the presence of an air filter can have a dramatic impact on the performance of your A/C and heating equipment, and not always in a good way.

Case in point: pleated air filters

In order to improve indoor air quality (IAQ), most people purchase pleated, 1″ air filters.

These filters are decent for filtering air, but they also create a huge restriction of airflow – a lot like blocking your arteries. When we measure the “blood pressure” (static pressure) of your A/C compressor on maintenance checks, we normally find pleated filters that restrict “blood flow” (airflow) and increase your risk of heart failure (less efficient operation and dirtier air).

Basically, standard air filters don’t clean the air efficiently or enable optimal system performance. They restrict airflow too much.

So what can you do? At PV Heating, Cooling & Plumbing, our maintenance program includes a year-long supply of poly filters that do a good job of filtering the air without restricting airflow.

If indoor air quality is really important to you, consider a Honeywell Whole House Media filter or a Trane CleanEffects filter. These filters are about four times the size of your standard pleated filter, so they enable increased filtration without increasing the static pressure (blood pressure) of your system.

We want to avoid clogging your bloodstream, right?

Of course, we do. Let’s do the same with your home’s air stream.

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