Saturday, August 25, 2012

That Giant Return Air Vent

     If you built a house with Ryan Homes you undoubtedly have that giant return air vent on the first floor somewhere. It could be a portal to... use your imagination. When I was cleaning things a week or so ago I noticed mine had a bunch of dust on the vents. Gross. Then, upon further inspection, I saw it had a filter in it, too. Nobody had ever mentioned this filter to us. I thought it was like all the other return air vents except huge. The filter was totally unexpected. So when the HVAC guy was here the other day doing to adjustments to our zone system I asked him about that filter and how often I should change it, etc.

     The HVAC guy, who was from Crown Heating and Cooling, told me there should not be two filters in the house. He took that one out - it wasn't a half inch filter, or a one inch filter, but, get this... it was a five inch filter. With pleats. Apparently, pleated filters are bad. Especially five inch pleated filters. Of course I had to ask him why we were given one if they are so bad for the system. He said because without it, when you sit in that room, it's noisier when the system is running, because you can hear the air moving. Which is because more air is moving. So, basically, you are partly disabling your system with that giant, noise-blocking filter. Great! I wonder how much harder our unit worked this summer to keep us cool and how much extra we paid for it?

     I'll be asking my PM about this, because there may have been a reason for the giant, five inch thick filter in the front room, right? Crown did install the system, after all. I'll keep you posted.


P.S. You might want to check that filter because we moved in our house in February, and our five in filter was lousy with filth. Really, really, really gross.

Update:  Here

4 comments:

  1. We were told about our filter there (called a media filter) and were told to change it every six months. He also said that it could be cleaned to prolong the life of the filter. I can't imagine not having the noise blocking of the filter as our system is kind of loud.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's really weird! I wonder what your PM will say.

    ReplyDelete
  3. thanks for the info. I have one in the living room and have not given it much thought. I will check it tonight.

    ReplyDelete
  4. first off whoever told you that you shouldnt have more than one filter does NOT know what he's talking about. you should have a filter for every air return vent. and now the peleated filters are fine to use, they are not for noise control they are to filter out more things in the air. just get the cheap ones and replace it every month.

    ReplyDelete