Do MERV16 Air Filters Need To be Replaced Once a Year?
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- Опубликовано: 3 ноя 2024
- Air Filter: amzn.to/3c7ZR8p
Airmon PM2.5 Tester: amzn.to/2FuWsVr
These filters are expensive, so one of the questions I have is, do I need to change this Merv16 filter once a year like they recommend?
Right now I am at a perfect time to put this question to the test. My existing filter is one year old, and I have a new one ready to go and most importantly we have fires going in Colorado right now and the air quality outside is terrible, you can hardly see the mountains right now which is odd for us. Around 120 pm2.5. Also it is not windy at all, I will get why that is important later, I will also get to what type of house I live in and how many ACH air changes per hour has later.
I am not an expert on air quality, but since I live in the Denver air which is in the top 15 for worst air quality I would call myself slightly educated. If you have recommendations on how I can do this test better next year let me know.
OK my test idea is pretty simple, run my blower from the circulate I normally use to On all the time which will help speed up the test because any air that leaks from outside in will get filtered faster. I will let it run for 2 hours while keeping an eye on the outside pollution levels to make sure they don’t change. After that I will put in the new filter and run it for two hours and see if the new one filtered out more pm2.5 than the old one.
I will be using the sire purple air for outside measurement, it might not be the most accurate since the unit is about $300, but since there are so many more than the official government ones I think they give a much more overall look at the pollution levels.
Now for what I am using to monitor the inside is a bit weak, it only cost $35 but it uses Sharp lasers and I have tested it next to the government ones and it will spot on. However I notice it is usually lower in level than the purple air units, but since it is all relative, it should make for a good test.
Just to show you that it works here is a test next to my toster. And I will run it outside before I start
While the test is running let me tell you about my 25 year house. I had a blow door test done on it last year and 3,500’ 4 people, one cat, climate zone 5,
Blower Door Reading: 3645 CFM50 Equivalent ACH50: 5.9 ACH50 Conditioned Air Volume: 37082.13 ft3 
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A subtle change of direction but great to see you back Dave!
Man I'm glad you're good.
haven't sen a video from you in quite a while but still subbed from the T3i days.
Gotta love citizen science! Fun experiment. However, there were a lot of variables unaccounted for.
1- a dirty filter will clean the air more thoroughly but at the expense of airflow. So the air the furnace is moving will be cleaner with the old filter but there will be less cfm. Whether this will lead to overall cleaner air is one of those sometimes, maybe , it depends situations.
2- your airflow measurements you mention in the comments here was actually air velocity not air flow. So when you say the velocity increased from 314fpm to 374fpm, that’s not the airflow. You need to multiply those numbers by the duct area to get air flow. So it may have been a sizable increase in airflow or not so much but we can’t tell from what you reported.
3- your house is very leaky. Mine is 0.5ACH - yes much tighter than normal, but a small change in wind or outdoor PM and you could dramatically change your infiltration rate which could have skewed your numbers quite a bit either before or after. Especially with your furnace running on low speed it might only be cleaning 400cfm. But with that leaky house the outdoor infiltration might have changed by a significant amount during your test depending on the wind. An extra 50 cfm of air at the us epa aqi of 114 is about 40micrograms of pm 2.5 per m3 - means you can add a lot of pm 2.5 at the same time that you are slowly trying to remove it. Hard to prove the filter change made a difference. aqicn.org/calculator
4-those vane-type anemometers are typically unreliable and difficult to compare. Hopefully you left the anemometer in place without touching it if you want to compare readings before and after.
5- another variable is possibly your furnace fresh air intake connecting the outdoors to the return air plenum. If your furnace moved more air, it will suck in more air from outdoors. This air gets filtered and starts to try and pressurize the house which reduces the unintentional air infiltration of dirty unfiltered air. However your house is leaky so this might not apply.
I’m not sure we are closer to knowing if or why the new filter made the air in your house any cleaner. But, what would be interesting is to have measured the total static pressure across the furnace before and after the filter change to see if the pressure stayed within the specs listed inside the furnace door. That’s probably a better indicator to indicate when to change the filter. Dwyer sells a static pressure probe kit and magnahelic gauges just for this purpose.
These are not intended to be critical comments about your experiment. Just my ramblings off the cuff after watching your video. Glad to see you taking action against pm 2.5!
Merry Christmas!
Great video. I purchased this filter in April and was wondering if it would actually last a year. And especially good to know the airflow numbers were still good after 1 year.
You have an air leak. The fiberglass, bugs and excessive dust are all red flags. Did you ever get this figured out? I work on these full time.
It has been a year and I just replaced the filter again, this time it was much cleaner without the bugs and excessive dust. Not sure why.
Dave - have you tried vacuum over the old filter to remove some debris (maybe blow some air through the filter in reverse) - be interesting to see the impact on results...
I was thinking the same thing, that would be a fun test to try.
Dave Dugdale 2nd RUclips Channel You stopped doing your other channel Doug?
@@DrunkDelilahBrewery No, but I will be changing direction soon.
Dave Dugdale great - we miss your videos !!!
Another post here in the same direction: Dave, please continue to post (content), all your content has been and will continue, admired !!
I missed it. Did the air flow improve
Yes, the PM2.5 levels dropped, I thought I said that at the end of the video.
But the airflow remained the same if that is what you asked.
Oh, I take that back the airflow was 314ft/min now it is 374ft/min after the filter change, so the new filter did allow for more airflow! Sorry about the confusion.
OK it has been one year and I just replaced another filter, I measured the airflow before and after, it was exactly the same this time. The filter looked much cleaner this year.
I came for your curved vs. flat screen review, now I remember another of my "To Do" list items. Thanks for nothing. ;)