Have you already scheduled routine maintenance for your air conditioner? If not, now is the time to do it—because spring is almost officially over and the serious heat will be settling in. You want your home’s cooling system to be ready to go and in the best possible shape to handle steady days of work.
Most maintenance tasks need professionals to perform. That’s why you have our experts available to do the job. But there’s one maintenance task you have to do yourself through the rest of the cooling season, and that is to routinely change the air filter. We’ve talked about the air filter before, but it’s worth reminding people because regularly swapping it for a new one is both easy and essential for an AC to work its best and avoid numerous problems.
How Frequently to Change the Filter
When you have our technicians out to your house for maintenance, we’ll change the filter as part of the service. We’ll be glad to help show you how this is done (it’s not tricky, trust us!) so you can do it in the coming months. But how often should you change it?
There’s no single answer to that question. It can range from every month to every three months depending on the filter and the condition of your house. Standard panel filters, the most inexpensive filter type, should be changed monthly. Pleated filters can often last for three months. However, if there are people in your home who have allergies or asthma, you should change the pleated filter every 45 days.
We recommend that no matter the type of filter, you make a check on it monthly. Hold it up to the light, and if it blocks the light, it’s time for a new one. You’ll soon learn a good frequency for changing the filter. Write down a reminder on your calendar, and use a marker to put the date the new filter was put in place along the filter’s edge.
What Can Go Wrong If the Filter Isn’t Changed on Time
The consequences for leaving a filter in place can be subtle to catastrophic, with the problems worsening over time. Here are just a few:
- A rise in electrical bills
- Reduced airflow from the vents, causing a drop in comfort
- Increase in dust and other debris circulating through the house
- Dust getting into the HVAC cabinet and causing repair issues
- Ice forming over the evaporator coil
- An overheated blower fan tripping the circuit breaker
- The filter collapsing into the blower assembly
- Growth of mold and mildew in the filter
- The AC short-cycling
That’s plenty that can go wrong, and you may end up with a whole menu of issues plaguing your air conditioner—all because of leaving a filter in place. You can always call us for fast repair service for your air conditioning in Gaithersburg, MD when you need it, but we know you would much rather avoid having trouble in the first place. So make air filter changes part of your summer routine.
Call Tuckers Air Conditioning, Heating & Plumbing to schedule your maintenance service. We serve Washington D.C., Montgomery, and Frederick Counties.