BurnsFamily Blog

Today I *finally* remembered to clean our furnace filter. According to the Furnace Filter industry, you’re supposed to replace filters every month, but we’re lucky if we do it twice a year. Instead of “paper” filters, we bought an “electrostatic, washable” filter. The BEST thing about these filters is that they fit ANY furnace. The filters come over-sized, and you can easily cut them down to size with scissors. Our furnace takes a weird size that no one seems to carry, but with these filters it doesn’t matter.

And instead of replacing them, you’re supposed to rinse or wash them. They’re made of plastic weaving and open-cell foam “sandwiched” between two plastic grids to hold everything together. The packaging says that one of these filters replaces 120 normal, “paper” furnace filters.

I used to recommend these to new home owners, but I now recommend buying two of them instead of one. Why? Because after you wash the filter, you really should let it dry completely. I don’t think furnace blower motors were designed to intake super moist air, like the kind they’d be handing with a just-been-rinsed filter.

Waiting for them to air-dry is easy to do when it’s Summer, but not so much during a rainy Fall or Winter. Today Julie and I bought a 2nd filter, and the original filter (10 years old!) is now drip-drying in the garage. Super! And at $20 a piece, they’re pretty cheap and quite economical, too.

Here’s a bad picture of what they look like, available at Home Depot and probably other places:

(Allergy Image courtesy http://www.crestock.com/free-image.aspx)