My single mother bought this townhouse 05 I grew up in this house live here till now and I just found out yesterday. There is a air filter in the furnace. Yes you got that right 20 years of the same filter. I just changed it today. Oh my God I can’t believe we’ve been breathing this air for 20 years
by Appropriate-Ring7564
44 Comments
Word to the wise: There is a filter in all furnaces.
On the bright side, very, very little air was getting through that.
You might want to have someone clean the vents.
thats pretty nasty, the furnace will probably break down out of spite. Check you power bill to see if it goes down, Gas too if the furnace is gas. The furnace has been running a marathon with a paper bag on its head.
I thought it was a concrete panel. No joke
How did your furnace even work
More like moldly interesting!
as someone who replaced a 5-year-old filter and immediately started breathing better… i can’t imagine twenty. y’all’s lungs deserve a medal.
Crazy that you never serviced the furnace in 20 years
I’m actually concerned.My lungs are healthy and I’m very active but i feel very uneasy knowing i was breathing this air.
its still cleaner than if you had no filter at all.
a dirty filter = cleaner air than no filter at all.
I would check in to getting your vents cleaned
That looks just like the default plastic “filter” that really just prevent debris from getting into your air handler that you can hose off…they have quality hepa filters that you can replace that with
Filters the air so good not even Covid was getting through
suprised that unit still runs
Green furnace
Lick it to build immunity
You might find that the HVAC runs much better, now.
My father’s retirement gig was doing maintenance type stuff on a 400 unit age 55+ community. He saw this disturbingly often. Also had people paying to have their systems replaced due to scammy HVAC techs.
Puts the “fur” in furnace.
I’m going to assume that your mom never had anyone to show her what is needed to provide home maintenance. If I had only watched my father, I never would have known either. It wasn’t until I got married that I learned that air filters in houses were a thing. Now might be a good time to Google home maintenance to see what else might have been overlooked.
Maybe all that dirt filtered the air?!?
I’m shocked the furnace didn’t shut down
Good lord.
Man, there could be dead corona virus trapped in there.
Shout out to the funny comments in here really made my day!
I stayed in a hotel this week and the cover over the AC thing was loose. I took a peek and the air filter had crud on it 3/4 inch thick. So gross.
Yah there wasn’t much air going thru that… surprised you didn’t have bigger issues like the unit breaking down or overheating… that’s just nasty.
As someone who usually tells people that duct cleaning is a scam… call someone tomorrow to get your ducts cleaned.
Just letting everyone know: your dishwasher has a filter, too.
I work as a home health aide and whenever I stay in a home with an ac unit that’s not like built in to the house like a wall unit window unit or a hotel like unit I always clean it for them. You’d be surprised how many elderly people don’t know or can’t clean them. I went to this one lady’s house like a few months ago and I cleaned her filter. I went back last night and cleaned it again and I truly believe it hadn’t been cleaned since I was there last. She lives in a facility and they should be cleaning them but they don’t.
Dishwashers also have a filter that should be cleaned regularly.
Blower motor will need replaced any second now. Plan for it
I’m shocked the furnace hasn’t gone out before now
OP, get the ducts cleaned.
If it moves air or fluids, it likely has a filter. Just keep that one in your noggin, folks.
You basically weren’t breathing that, little air was getting through as it was filtering like crazy. The more shit on the filter the more it filters. There’s actually kind of a sweet spot filter can get in where they are better filters and still flow enough to be within tolerance on the efficiency. Yours passed that obviously but yeah… your power bill will go down as it won’t have to run
as long to condition the air now.
Have you checked the dryer vent for lint?
Actually it looks to be an electrostatic filter. It hasn’t been cleaned for some time but I’m sure at some point someone has vacuumed and washed it.
I can’t wait for you to update us with a post about how much lower your heating bill is 😂
I can’t believe the motor didn’t burn out. But twenty years ago they didn’t have computer control motors either. Says alot about today’s technology. Just selling crap these days.
Curious about the make and model that furnace is?
I’m surprised the motor of the furnace blower held up that long
So um, I have a ac/furnace unit…where would one look to see if they too have a filter to change?
I change the intake filters on each floor. Just checking to see if I missed something.
so you ran it for 20 years without having to make a service call and the filter looks like… that???
Stuff like this kills HVAC systems.