It's Time to Change Your Furnace Filter - A Sustainable Option

THE FARMHOUSE 

Garrett’s coming at you today with a post about the new reusable furnace filters we just bought.

When we first moved to Ellensburg it took us awhile to figure out our thermostat settings so we were (mostly) comfortable but not making our electrical meter go brrrrr (like $860 / month brrrr! yes that was one of our monthly electrical bills from our first winter). We also had some additional regular maintenance that we had to dial in namely changing out the filters in the air handlers. As we were doing our filter changes in prep for the cold weather this year we found out something cool that we wanted to share with you today.   

I know Cathy said we weren’t going to fire up our furnace just yet but it’s time! We’ve had some crisp weather blow in with the start of fall in Ellensburg. The leaves on our huge elms are turning yellow and orange and mornings in the house are just a bit too cold for comfort now. We have a forced air heating and cooling system that runs off an exterior heat pump unit. It keeps our old drafty house pretty cozy for the most part. The biggest drawback to this system is that our electricity bills can run upwards of $600/mo in the coldest part of the winter. That’s probably more to do with the insulating qualities (or lack thereof) of our old house than the heating system though.

We have two separate systems, one for the upstairs and one for the main floor. Each has an air-handling unit that connects to a compressor outside via refrigerant lines. The system moves heat using the refrigerant either into (if in heat mode) or out of (if in cool mode) the air handler, hence the term “heat-pump” and if ya don’t know now ya know! 

psst: if you haven’t changed your filter in a long time, just have a look at what our’s looked like after one year…

Reusable filters

The single biggest helping hand you can lend your forced-air system is regular filter changes or as we’re now doing regular filter cleanings. That’s right you can actually buy long-lived, reusable filters for HVAC systems that just need cleaning with soapy water every three to six months. I had only ever seen the carboard and filter paper versions that just get tossed in the trash when they clog up. There are a few styles and options out there for reusable filters. We opted for filters that had MERV ratings of 8 and 11. As the MERV rating goes up (on a scale from 1-16) the filtration efficiency of smaller the particles goes up. We love reusable and long-lived products and were excited to find HVAC filters that are designed to last a lifetime or at least many years! 

“The single biggest helping hand you can lend your forced-air system is regular filter changes or as we’re now doing regular filter cleanings”

These forced -air systems can be pretty long lived. Ours are over 20 years old and still work great. I’m comfortable with jinxing myself here because we did just have them serviced when our A/C went out this summer. We had temps shooting north of 100 and my sister-in-law had just arrived for a summer staycation. Of course this would be when the A/C crashed! After the service tech was finally able to squeeze us in, it was an easy fix. A couple hundred bucks and two new capacitors later were able to take the swelter out of house for a good night’s sleep : ). 

In Seattle we didn’t have A/C at any of our houses. The heating systems ran the gamut from in-slab hydronic radiant (our favorite!) to gas fireplaces, to electric wall heaters to gas furnaces. All of which didn’t cost much too operate since we were in relatively small spaces and in a maritime climate. What has been your favorite heating source?