There are a lot of tasks to keep track of when owning a home, things that should be done annually or a couple of times a year to help maintain the house and prolong the life of your appliances and household comforts. One of those tasks is changing your home HVAC air filter.
Side note, you should also have your HVAC unit serviced by a company once a year as well.
LOCATING YOUR HOME HVAC AIR FILTER
Where the air filter is located can vary. Your air filter may be in your air handler unit or it may be in the return vent.
The air handler unit, usually in your attic, basement, or utility closet, is a large metal box containing the system’s blower motor, evaporator coil, electrical components, and air filter. It will contain a small slot, about 1-2 inches wide, either on the side, above, or below the unit. This is where the air filter is located.
For our home, the filter is located in our return vent. The return vents can be located on a ceiling, a wall, or even the floor for older homes. The return vent sucks in air from your home and brings it to the AC. You can tell if the vent is a return vent because when running the unit, you can feel the air pulling into the vent, rather than blowing out. Our return vent is located on the ceiling.
HOW OFTEN YOU SHOULD CHANGE YOUR HOME HVAC AIR FILTER
We change our filters every 3-6 months, however, there are many factors such as house size, outdoor air quality where you live, and if you have pets, that can affect how often you should change your filter. The best way to know how often you should change your filter is to perform a visual inspection of the filter each month. To do this, hold up the filter to a light source. If it’s no longer white and light does not pass through it, then you should change the filter. After a few months, you’ll learn how often you need to change your filter.
Luckily, changing a filter is a very simple task that takes only a couple of minutes.
MATERIALS
| MATERIALS NEEDED |
|---|
| Air Filter* |
*Make sure to purchase the right size air filter. To know what size you need, open the vent and remove the old air filter. Examine the filter to see if it has the size written on it. If not, take out a tape measure and measure the filter’s width, length, and height.
TIME COMMITMENT
| ACTIVE TIME: 5-10 minutes |
| TOTAL TIME: 5-10 minutes |
STEP BY STEP
STEP 1 – REMOVE THE OLD HVAC AIR FILTER
The first step to changing your home HVAC air filter is to remove the old one. To do this, first unlock and open the vent.
Our vent is in the ceiling and held closed with two latches. So to unlock our vent, I pull down on the tabs for the latches, one on the left side of the panel and one on the right.
Then the vent panel swings open and hangs down via hinges.
After opening the vent, grab the old filter and remove it from the air return or air handler unit. Then dispose of it.
NOTE: Make sure the HVAC unit is not running while changing the air filter. Otherwise you’ll be fighting against the air suction to remove the air filter.
STEP 2 – INSTALL THE NEW HOME HVAC AIR FILTER
Once the old filter has been removed, take the new filter out of its packaging and install it into your wall/ceiling return or the designated opening on your air handler unit. There should be an arrow on the filter that indicates the airflow direction. Make sure to install the arrow pointing toward the blower motor, which is generally the largest part of your HVAC unit.
If you’re installing the filter in a wall/ceiling return then make sure to press firmly on each corner to ensure that the filter is installed tightly.
STEP 3 – CLOSE THE VENT OR UNIT BACK UP
After the new home HVAC air filter has been installed, close the return vent or air handler unit back up and lock it down.
Make sure to take note of when you swapped out the filter so you know when you’ll need to replace it again. I like to keep track of this on my phone, but you could also write the installation/change by dates on the cardboard part of the filter itself.
