How Can You Improve the Indoor Air Quality in Your Home?
During the last year, most of us spent a significant amount of time inside our homes. When you are comfortably packed inside the walls of your home, you don’t usually consider air pollution to be a problem. But, this is far from reality. Reports on air pollution suggest that indoor air pollution is equally, if not more, dangerous for your health.
A major contributor to poor indoor air quality can be unchanged AC filters. However, most people are not in the habit of changing their AC filters frequently. If you are one of those people, you must understand the repercussions of not doing it. Leaving the dirty AC filters for long can be the root cause of several problems for you and your loved ones.
Let’s first understand how AC filters work to have a better idea.
How Do AC Filters Work?
The air conditioning system inside your house uses AC filters to remove pollutants from the air. The basic function of these filters is to clean the air circulating through your house. They can be made up of a spun fiberglass, pleated paper, or any other material used to trap the contaminants efficiently.
Commonly, the main pollutants found inside a house are dust, dirt, molding, pollen, pet hair, fibers, lint, bacteria, plastic, or wood particles. Depending on the type of AC filters, they can filter the air more quickly and efficiently.
What Happens When You Don’t Change AC Filters?
AC filters are not designed to filter the air permanently. Changing the AC filters is recommended at regular intervals to maintain air quality inside the house. If you ignore it for an extended period, the following things may happen:
- Accumulated Contaminants
As the AC filters work to capture contaminants from the air, they can build up over time. The dirty AC filters, if left for a long time, will hamper the filtration efficiency considerably. It can lead to jamming of the fan motors and valves or even breakdown of the system. Not to mention that the air quality inside your home will suffer because of the accumulated dirt.
Depending on the AC filters type, you can change them or clean them frequently to avoid this. Fortunately, changing ac filters is not as difficult as you might think. The Nanotech AC Filters by Nirvana Being are an example of conveniently changeable and technologically advanced products available today.
- Reduced Airflow
Allowing the dirt and dust to accumulate over the ac filters makes the system work harder. The air cannot move easily through the cooling or heating system, and thus, the airflow is reduced. This also means that the air conditioner will draw more energy, which means higher electricity bills.
Since the dirty AC filters create an obstruction in the airflow, it does not provide the supposed performance level. The air may not be able to reach all corners of the room and result in decreased cooling.
- Risk of Damage
The dirty AC filters can be a primary cause of malfunctioning systems. As the air conditioner works harder to do its job, there is a greater risk of wear and tear. In the long run, it can damage the equipment permanently. Regular cleaning or replacement of the AC filters can spare you the cost of repair and other unnecessary expenses.
- Health Concerns
Leaving the AC filters dirty can cause several health-related issues such as respiratory problems, allergic reactions, infections, etc. Generally, people do not realize that dirty AC filters can be responsible for such cases. However, it can be detrimental to your health since you spend a good amount of time breathing the contaminated indoor air.
Create a Safe Environment Inside Your Home
With the increasing threats to health in the environment, it is vital to be cautious. If you reside in a particularly polluted area, you may be at a higher risk of developing health problems. Therefore, understanding how indoor air quality can be improved with these small changes can be helpful in many ways. Having clean AC filters is a doable and important step towards ensuring cleaner air inside your house.
