Search For 12 Each Ace Pleated Furnace Air Filter at Amazon
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Have you ever been reading the paper or looking at TV when you are abruptly bothered by a humming sound in the background and realize it’s your air conditioning or furnace unit pumping cool or hot air into your home (depending on the season) in order to make you feel more comfortable? Naturally you want to make the unit as effective as possible and even if it is in good mechanical condition there are sure areas that you will have to check out to keep it in tip-top performance. A poor or clogged intake air filter in your unit could reduce the cooling or heating efficacy in your home by 30% to 50% and even more. With today’s energy costs that could mount up to a big sum of money, so making a little crusade to select the right air filter for your A/C furnace unit is surely worthwhile. I had been replacing old air filters over the years in my A/C furnace when I of a sudden realized that my bestloved type has been tardily disappearing from the store shelves and then I found out that it was closely out of the question to get the size that I needed. This prompted me to investigate what type filter I could alternate that would come close to what I had been using. Upon my investigation of the filters being employed in today’s market I was astonished that there had been no real radical changes in the design or betterment from the days when I worked on them a heap of years ago. I might mention at this point that I had been in the air filter business and worked in a laboratory where we tested and designed air filters that were employed in a forced air and heating schemes that are very similar to those being used in today’s housing market. So with numerous effort I started looking at all the dissimilar types of filters being used in today’s housing market that I could alternate for the type filter that I had been using in my household. I am what you call semi-retired and got all fired-up when the need for air filters for my unit could not be found, so I am relying on my early experiences in this field. I thought that I would like to percentage these experiences with others who might gain by them. I got into the air filter business strictly by accident. Many years ago when I landed my primary occupation as a project engineer for a fiberglass company located in New York. The company made a fiberglass mat that was used in lead acid automobile batteries to reinforce the lead oxide on the positive plate. The glass mat ranged in thickness from 15 to 20 mil. I found out later that they used the same mat material for making air filters. The mat was incisively pleated in the same manner as they use in today filters and then placed in a one or two inch cardboard frame. My occupation was to test these air filters and improve on their performance. Not only did I test these filters but I likewise tested a great deal of of our competitor’s air filters to see whose filters were most effective and had the most eminent dust keeping capacity. The unit used for testing these air filters was designed in accordance to (ASHRAE) test method number (blank). The test numbers I do not recall. The test unit consisted of a 12” by 12.” upright air flow tunnel equipped with water gauges that measured resistance of the air flow before and after the filter being tested. Part of the testing routine was to place artificial dust on to a vibrating trough that fed it into the intake top orifice of the tunnel at a slow given rate and the air flow velocity tunnel rate had been adjusted to the feet per minute (100 fpm to 300 fpm) that is normally used in providing the intermediate household A/C furnace units. The test method was intended to determine what each filter design was capable of in terms of. 1. Efficiency 2. Dust keeping capacity 3. Air flow resistance before reaching.50wg” (inches of water gauge). At this reading (.50″wg) a filter is loaded to capacity and will not be competent to grant a sufficient amount of air flow to pass through a filter to be effective in a heating and cooling system. What is the function of an air filter and how does it work in your A/C furnace unit? Most air forced units in houses today are equipped with a blower that is designed to move huge volumes of air through air ducts that are strategically located allround the house. If the house blower was exclusively blocked either by placing a heavy polyethylene sheet or solid plywood board on the air intake side of the blower the air flow on the exhaust side would be nil (no air motion at all). Therefore it is indispensable that the air intake of the house blower must not totally be restricted, but controlled. The air filter is placed directly on the intake side of the blower which will cause a good deal of resistance to the air flow nonetheless as the filter begins capturing the dust particles, the blockage of the air flow starts to diminishes thence restricting the air flow into a room. Now that we know the basic function on how the air filter works in a household unit we now have to select the right filter for your unit. The only way to know is to test them. When turning on the testing (ASHARE) unit an air flow stream formulates velocities that may range around 100 to 300 feet per minute depending on the material thickness and is measured by using a water gauges. When you insert the air filter test material you then have interrupted (blockage) the air flow and that is measured by the water gauge that is located on the output side of the air flow.this reading may is normally around.05″ to.08″ of w.g. and is called original resistance to the air flow. As the test proceeds the artificial dust that is being tardily fed into the dust chamber is gradually caught by the filter will increase the resistance of the air flow until it reaches.50″w.g. At this reading the filter has reached it full capacity. When testing filters I found that the filter material we made in forming our basic glass mat (when pleated) showed reasonable to poor results, clogged up quickly and also did not hold much dust before failing. I was not too disappointed as for the most part all of the contender filters were in the same class. However there was one filter that was systematically outstanding, made by Owens Corning. The test results would repeat themselves time after time and would be closely identical in dust keeping capacity and efficiency. It was superior to any filter on the market at that time. It was made using coarse fiberglass strands that were criss-crossed and placed clockwise side on the intake side of the filter and with finer fiberglass strands on the discharge side. When this filter was examined after finished it is test cycle (5.0″water gauge) it was cut open and we cited that ever glass fiber was coated with dust particles. Unfortunately this filter had been discontinued for reasons unknown; notwithstanding it was a great model to follow. I had been testing filters on and off for when it comes to two or three years. Most of the filters I tested were single sheet air filter material and were either pleated or waffled and they were also subject to surface loading (clogging). What is meant by surface loading is that when the dust corpuscles journeying in the air flow stream and are caught by the little openings (pores) located on the surface of the filter material. They will tardily block the incoming air flow. With this condition, the air flow (resistance) will increase quickly thence cutting way back on the amount air flow coming into a room. The resulting reduction of air flow into your home means your A/C furnace will have to work twice as long in order to keep up. Surface loading means that there is no actual storage space for dust to pile up except for on the surface of the air filter material. Rating the efficacy in an A/C furnace unit comes in two parts. First comes the efficacy of the air filter and then and then the efficacy of the air flow output. Note: if you did not put a filter or any objects in front of the blower unit you would then have 100% air flow (100fpm – 300 fpm). Unfortunately the air flow is scaled down when a filter is installed therefore cutting back on the air flow efficiency. Air flow efficacy and filter efficacy will have to be conservatively balanced to get the most out of your household A/C furnace unit. When we primary introduced the all fiberglass filter we had substantial difficultnesses that were at long last get over with time. In testing the all fiberglass filter we brought up that the dust atoms did not surface load and that the duct corpuscles were gradually being caught by the glass fiber underneath the surface of the filter (storage area). Testing showed that the all fiberglass filters had dust keeping capacities two to three times more outstanding than that of single sheet filter material and still concede the air flow velocities to be maintained until it reached(.50w.g. ) on the testing machine.. But all fiber glass filters are not devised equal. In choosing an all fiberglass filter you have to look at five things. 1. The intake side must have an open weave to concede the dust molecules to enter and the exhaust side must be a close weave to prevent them from leaving. 2. Touch the filter face lightly with your finger and then note if any fire retardant oil has been transposed to your finger. Note: numerous all fiberglass makers do not add a slight mist of fire retardant oil(approved by underwriters) to the filter material, nonetheless we found that this mainly bettered the filters efficacy and dust keeping capacity so we adopted into our production. 3. The back of the filter frame must be strong sufficient to support at the air flow velocities that are being used by your unit. Note: as a filter loads up with dust the resistance increments and may be without apparent effort sucked into your furnace. 4. Hold the filter up to the light. You must see a faint shadow of light. Then scan the filter from side to side observing the density to see that it is uniform. 5. Test for rigidity. Press down on the face of the fiberglass mat and then let go. It must bounce right back to it is introductory height. A one inch all fiberglass filter is a “true” one-inch filter as it very seldom surface loads and allows dust corpuscles to store up in the one inch thickness area (holding from two to three more dust) than the pleated filter with slight affect on the air flow velocity, which in turn allows the filter life to be primarily extended. Pleated filters have a problem in the dust keeping capacity as the filter surface is the only place that the dust atoms may be stored thence making the filter life substantially shorter. When selecting a non-fiberglass filter in today’s market you will have to keep in mind the conditions in your own household. It may be necessary to obtain a high efficacy filter due to the allergies that run in your family. Most high efficacy filters will note on the filter package of what the filter is competent of gathering in terms of dust, spores and etc. Keep in mind that when using high efficacy filters the life span is much shorter than normal filters and have to be changed more frequently. As for the normal household in choosing right filter I ought to confess that I have not tested all of the new filters in today’s market. However here are a great deal of of the basic rules that I would follow when I was testing newly designed filters. 1. Uniform density–test by scanning filter from side to side. Keep in mind the area conditions surrounding your home. If you will have to live in a high dust emplacement with a lot of construction or southern region where the air conditioning (part of your furnace) is going almost eight months out of the year then your selections will have to be made accordingly, keeping in mind the basic rules in selecting the right air filter. |
