Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Furnace Filters and Dehumidifier Thoughts



Filters are a boring topic, but most families need them, and need them every 90 days.  My house has filter grills, and I use the disposable kind of filters.  Therefore I have to put in about 5 or more filters every 90 days.  Storage isn’t a problem for me, I have a climate controlled attic in my home, but for others, signing up with Amazon for automatic delivery every 6 months or more, might be advisable.

I have found a local hardware store with good prices on filters, and they carry odd sizes.  But I prefer, when possible, a 300 micron pleated filter, usually one by Purolator or Filtrete. Sometimes purchased at WalMart, but they often don’t have my (odd) sizes. And they are very pricey there.  These days they run about $5 to $10 a filter (on line), outrageously expensive for such a mundane, high production, product. I guess shipping is a high cost, since they take up a great deal of space in a shipping van or UPS.  Even though, of course, they are light weight.

I even saw a so-called high performance filter on Amazon that was $18 for a single disposable filter in my 10 x 30 size. That’s just ridiculous.

I use a portable dehumidifier in summer, and that helps keep the air clean and nice as well.  After trying many brands (I have owned quite a few brands over the years), my current favorite is Frigidaire from Lowes or Home Depot (or on line from Amazon).  It has a lifetime filter than can be washed easily, so that helps as well.  By dropping humidity, the house feels cooler, and thus saves on Air Conditioning run times (setting a few degrees higher temp). 

My most recent purchase of the dehumidifier was from this link.

On the topic of energy savings and home comfort, I have slowly replaced most of my normal light bulbs with LED’s. Finding the right ones has been a slow Easter Egg hunt, as some brands are too expensive, some put out ugly light, and some are not as bright as the replacement.  But others are even brighter than the bulb they are supposed to replace.  Lately a great find was a WalMart branded 40 watt bulb, with warm light, and very bright, can’t really tell it from the old incandescent bulbs it replaced. The nice warm light was not yellow tinged either. And price was very low, a few dollars or less in-store, and even less in a big box of identical product containing 30 each. I found my big box of bulbs on EBay. Quite an accident to discover what I wanted there. I have fixtures that needed a total of 15 , 40 watt bulbs. This should save both heat build up and energy in summer, and energy in winter.  



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