Dirty air filters can do a lot more damage than you might think. They can wreak havoc on your air conditioner’s efficiency, and its overall performance. Nobody wants lowered capacity on their AC, especially when it’s extremely flexible even outside of your usual maintenance appointments.
Without proper air filter replacement, you will need AC repair in Ashland. Here’s what you need to know about just how important the state of your air filter is to the rest of your AC.
What Dirty Filters do to Your AC
Filters add a bit of necessary air resistance. When your AC tries to pull air in, it has to fight with the filter. The filter lets air pass through, but small debris gets trapped in the fibers. That’s the gist of what your filter does, so what happens if all those particles of dust and pollen got through?
All that dust would sit on top of your evaporator coil, which is critical for the function of your entire AC. It’s where warm air is transferred into cool air, so if there’s too much dust, it acts as an insulator and doesn’t let your AC do its job. Efficiency wanes, and eventually you have warm air coming through your vents instead.
Dirty Filters Add Wear and Tear
Perhaps the worst part of not replacing an inexpensive filter is the long-term, substantially expensive damage it can cause to your AC. Think of wear and tear as an inevitable degradation of your AC, because that’s what it is.
You can’t control that your AC will one day break down for the final time, but you can control the speed at which it happens. Within reason.
When you don’t change your air filter, that wear and tear timer runs out faster. Eventually, the speed of degradation seriously wears down your AC’s total lifespan.
Your Indoor Air Quality Suffers as a Result
While your air conditioner’s filter is not a replacement for a proper air filtration system, it’s still an element of your air quality control. When you throw out the old filter, all that dust buildup didn’t enter your lungs, and that’s a good thing.
Higher Energy Bills
When your AC has to work harder, it has to work longer, too. It draws as much power as it needs, but it stays on for longer. Poor air circulation within your AC can extend the average cycle runtime by five or more minutes, and you’re likely to run a dozen or more cycles per day.
That’s like running your air conditioner for an extra hour every single day. If you compare that against your kWH rates on your energy bill, your head might just spin.
So Do Dirty Air Filters Break Your AC?
Yes, they absolutely do. When your AC runs longer, has a harder time converting warm air to cool air, and wears down faster as a result, it can be part of the reason your air conditioner didn’t last as long as you thought. Get proactive with filter changes, and never skip your annual maintenance appointment, either.
Contact Air Supreme Heating and Air Conditioning today to schedule your air conditioner repair as soon as possible.