Air Filtration in Smithville, ON — Picking a Filter Your Furnace Can Pull Air Through

In Smithville, air filtration comes down to the filter sitting in your furnace. This page covers what that filter takes out, which MERV number suits your house, how often to change it, and where filtering stops.

What a Furnace Filter Takes Out of the Air in Your Smithville Home

Your furnace fan pulls air out of the rooms, through the filter, and back out through the vents. The filter catches what the fan carries past it: dust, pollen, pet hair, and the fine particles off cooking and smoke. Air that never reaches the furnace never reaches the filter.

Those fine particles are measured in micrograms per cubic metre, the amount of solid material floating in a given volume of air. Health Canada studied homes across Canadian cities and found average indoor levels under 15 without smokers, and under 35 where someone smokes. (1)

Its rule for homeowners is simpler. Indoor fine particulate should be lower than the air outside, because a higher reading indoors means something inside is producing it. (1) Smoking, cooking and cleaning are the sources it names. (1)

Cooking is the one in almost every house. On the rural edges of West Lincoln a wood stove adds to it, and those houses load a filter faster than a house in town.

Choosing a MERV Rating Your Furnace Can Pull Air Through

MERV is the number printed on a furnace filter that tells you how much fine dust it catches, and a higher number catches more. For fine particulate matter, Health Canada’s guidance on cleaner air spaces recommends a MERV value of 13 or more. (2)

The same guidance carries the condition the filter box leaves off. Your system has to be capable of handling the pressure drop a MERV 13 or 14 filter creates. (2) A tighter filter is harder to draw air through, so a fan that cannot move enough air sends less warm air to your rooms.

Work that through on a real house. An older Smithville furnace with a one-inch slot has little filter area to draw through, and a MERV 13 there can leave the far bedroom cold in February. A five-inch media cabinet holds several times that area, so the fan draws through the same rating with less resistance.

Three things decide which rating suits your house:

• how deep the filter slot is, one inch or five
• whether the furnace fan can move air against a tighter filter
• how fast your house loads a filter

Mike Peddle holds a TSSA Heating Contractor registration, and we look at the fan, the slot and the ductwork before naming a number.

How Often to Change a Furnace Filter in a Smithville House

Natural Resources Canada puts your owner’s manual first, because the interval belongs to your model. If more than three months have passed, it says to change the filter anyway. (3) A clean one improves airflow and helps warm air get out of the vents and into your home. (3)

Treat three months as a ceiling rather than a schedule. A filter still pale at that point in town can be grey at six weeks in a farmhouse on a gravel road toward Caledonia.

Pets, a wood stove and renovation dust do the same thing. Wildfire smoke does it fastest. Health Canada’s guidance notes that smoke can overload a filter, so check yours during a smoke event rather than waiting for the usual date. (2)

Filtration and Purification Are Two Different Jobs

Filters catch particles as air passes through them. Gases and smells are not particles, so they travel straight through and back out into the room.

Purification begins where that stops, and Health Canada is careful about what it credits. Some air cleaners add an activated carbon filter aimed at gases, such as those given off by paint, cleaners and new furniture. The same guidance notes there is no widely used performance rating system for filters designed to remove gases. (4) So an odour claim has no scale behind it, the way MERV has one for particles.

Avoid devices that produce ozone, because ozone can harm your health. (4)

That same page sets the order. The best ways to improve indoor air are to remove the source and to ventilate with clean outdoor air. (4) A filter comes after both of those.

What Affects Air Filtration Cost in Smithville

Five things move what air filtration costs in a Smithville home:

• how deep the filter slot is, since fitting a media cabinet is a different job from sliding one in
• whether the furnace can draw air through a tighter filter without losing heat to the rooms
• how many returns the system filters at, because some houses here have two
• how easy the filter is to reach behind a finished basement wall
• how fast the house loads a filter, which pets, gravel roads and wood stoves all change

Toward Caledonia and the rural parts of West Lincoln, more houses sit on gravel and more of them burn wood. Neither fact changes the equipment we fit. Both change how often you buy filters, and that is the part people leave out of the cost.

Air Filtration Questions From Smithville Homeowners

What MERV rating should I use in a Smithville home?

Health Canada recommends MERV 13 or more for fine particulate matter, provided your system can handle the pressure drop. (2) An older one-inch slot often cannot, and a deeper media cabinet is how you get there.

How often should I change my furnace filter?

Check your owner’s manual first, and change the filter at three months if the manual says nothing. (3) Pets, a gravel road, a wood stove or a smoke day all shorten that.

Will a furnace filter get rid of smells and gases?

No. Filters catch particles, and gases are not particles, so they pass through and back into the room. There is no rating system in common use for filters built to remove gases. (4)

Do air filtration systems actually work?

They cut the particles moving through your ductwork, which is the job they do. Removing the source and ventilating with outdoor air both do more, on Health Canada’s own advice. (4)

Can I fit a better filter myself?

You can change a filter yourself, and most people should. Whether your furnace can take a tighter one is the question to settle first, and that needs a look at the fan and the ductwork.

Book an Air Filtration Visit

Call the office with the size printed on the filter you pull out, and how deep the slot is. We look at air filtration in homes across Smithville, Grimsby, Beamsville, Caledonia and West Lincoln. Environmental Heating & Cooling has been family-owned and serving Niagara since 2014. If dust, damp or a smell you cannot place is the real problem, start with duct cleaning, humidity and the rest of the air quality work.

References

1. Health Canada, Guidance for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in residential indoor air, canada.ca
2. Health Canada, Guidance for Cleaner Air Spaces during Wildfire Smoke Events, canada.ca
3. Natural Resources Canada, Winter is coming: Top tips to heat your home for less, natural-resources.canada.ca
4. Health Canada, Using a portable air cleaner to improve indoor air, canada.ca