This Blows

In my old house, replacing my furnace filter was a breeze. I simply removed the old one and put a new one in its place. If I was out of filters, I would open up the furnace, take a look at the numbers on the side of the filter, go to my local Home Depot, drive back home, look at the numbers again, write them down this time, go BACK to my local Home Depot, find that the only size of filter that they didn't have on their shelves was the size that I needed, eventually find the filter at Wal-Mart, Lowes, or the other Home Depot in the area, and then replace the filter. I would even buy several at a time to make it less likely that I would have to travel to and fro, looking for the right sized filter.

Not so easy in my new home. I went to change my air filter, preparatory for the upcoming heating season and in the place of one of those familiar cardboard-framed furnace air filters, I found a strange-looking blue filter with no frame and with a couple of metal rods to hold it in place. I couldn't find the dimensions written ANYWHERE.

Apparently, this is something known as a "washable" furnace filter. It comes as standard equipment with my Bryant furnace. Every so often, I'm supposed to hose it down and put it back in the furnace. I noticed that it would probably filter the air a lot better if a section of it wasn't covered in paint. It was also extremely dusty. We're not talking dust mice, or even dust rats. We're talking full-grown dust wolves or dust bears here. Apparently, the people that lived here before us didn't know about washable furnace filters either. I should have checked THAT out before now. Hopefully, the furnace's life wasn't shortened TOO much by trying to suck air through several dozen pounds of dust for the summer months.

I don't like washable filters though. They appear to let too much dust and stuff through. Since my son has asthma (or something very closely-related to asthma), we need something that won't let as much dust through.

After much searching, I found the owner's manual to my furnace. Fortunately, there was a table that showed what size filter I should use. Of course, it wasn't as easy as just looking at the table. No, I had to know such things as the width of the furnace and whether the filter was located on the bottom of the furnace or to the side of the furnace.

I took a trip down to the basement (loaded for bear, just in case) to measure the width of the furnace. I could then decipher the table in the furnace user's guide and I came to the conclusion that I needed a filter that was 24 inches by 25 inches by 4 and 5 sixteenths inches.

I wrote the measurements down and headed off to Home Depot, which is fortunately right by my new place of employment. There were no filters anywhere CLOSE to those dimensions. I hadn't actually ever seen a 4-inch-thick furnace filter before.

After some Internet searches, I found the filters I needed. Although not very expensive, they wanted a LOT of money for shipping. I searched some more and found the filters I needed from a place that only wanted to charge a few fingers instead of an arm and a leg for shipping. I think I'll send 'em the ones the bear already chewed on.