Your family’s safety and well-being means the world to you. Come to think of it, your own personal safety and well-being means something, too. You would never knowingly place your family in harm’s way but there are also some unseen dangers you might not even know about. It can be uncomfortable and dangerous if the air in your house contains irritants that can have a harmful impact on your health, including allergies or asthma.  Thankfully, properly selected air filters can significantly reduce the number of irritants in your home, and a new federal system for testing the efficiency of filters is close to being finalized.

Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value (MERV) rates how efficiently filters remove particles from the air.  For household use, the scale ranges from 1 to 16, with the higher numbers providing improved efficiency and better performance.  For example, a rating of 1 will result in a dust spot efficiency of less than 20 percent, while a rating of 16 can result in a dust spot efficiency of more than 95 percent.  Filters with higher ratings have the ability to not only remove more particles from the air, but smaller particles as well, resulting in improved air quality for your family. Plus, as the air cycles repeatedly through the filter, more and more of the pollutants get removed.

Here are a few items to remember when determining just what those MERV numbers mean to you:

• MERV means Minimum Efficiency Reporting Values
• The scale ranges from 1 to 16 for household use, with MERV 7-13 reasonably effective at removing unwanted materials from your air. Any higher MERV and there’s a risk of impeding airflow through the filter.
• The higher the number on the scale, the better the efficiency
• Higher numbered air filters remove more — as well as smaller — particles from the air
• The more particles removed from the air, the better the air quality

Valley Heating, Cooling and Electrical can provide the knowledge you need for heating and cooling needs specific to the Silicon Valley.  If you have further questions regarding MERV filters and how they can help improve the air quality of your home, you can visit our website for in-depth information on most HVAC topics, or just give us a call at 408-294-6290.

Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information, click here to download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

Valley Heating, Cooling & Electrical services the South Bay Peninsula and Santa Cruz areas in California. To get started, check out our website or see our current promotions.