Having said that, the obvious exception is when cigarette, pipe or cigar smoking occurs on a regular basis. Now the pollution can’t be missed, you can see it and you can smell it. The health concerns regarding smoking are well known and possibly beaten to death, so we won’t get in to that. Not so obvious is the health impact of dirty interior air when we don’t notice it. Medical experts have concluded that symptoms ranging from headaches, asthma, bronchitis, allergies and cancer among others, may likely be attributed to polluted interior air.

The next reason to use a furnace filter or air conditioning filter is to keep your heating and cooling system operating as it was designed and to prolong its life. For an air conditioning unit to operate at its peak efficiency it needs to be kept clean. The evaporator is the component in your system in which the air passes directly over and is cooled and returned to your living space. The surfaces of the evaporator are normally very cold and therefore wet with condensation. The moisture in the air condensates on the evaporator and subsequently drains to the exterior of the building. Imagine blowing dirty air across the cold wet surfaces of the evaporator. How long do you think it takes for the dirt to completely cover this wet surface? Once dirty, the evaporator loses efficiency and may begin to support mold and bacteria growth, after all it is a dark moist environment.

The last reason for using an air conditioning filter and furnace filter is to help keep your house clean. Look at it this way, every time your air conditioner or furnace runs it is like someone is vacuuming the air of dust, dirt or worse. All of this for only a couple bucks per month, seems like an obvious choice, your air must be filtered. What may not be obvious is which furnace filter and air conditioning filters should be used, we will try to help with that decision.

We pass through the grill and immediately encounter the dreaded Air Conditioner Filter. No worries for us though since we are pure and clean and pass through the filter unscathed. We are moving fast and it is almost completely dark inside the tube where we find ourselves traveling. We don’t travel too much further before we run into a series of cold, wet metal plates. It’s turbulent and noisy but we emerge from the turbulence quickly and we are now about 25 degrees colder and a little drier.

Our journey continues through a tube which has some quick turns and junctions, in the distance we notice a little light. With the increasing light, we see the inside of the tube is nice and clean, not a bad place to travel. Soon we pass through another grill but much smaller that the first one. We’ve been deposited in the kids room where all is quiet, a rare thing we’re told. We float around the room a bit and as we do we notice what sounds like light breathing. Sure enough the baby is taking her afternoon nap and we continue to drift above her. The room is pleasant and clean, some light music plays in the distance.

A little more drifting and we find ourselves gently pulled into the baby’s nose back into the darkness and into her lungs. We are warm and moist again and happy to be clean and healthy for her to breathe.

Good thing her dad uses a good air conditioning filter.