space heater

Re: space heater

krisman wrote: »

anyway, i have found a major source of my heating problem, the filters inside the vents are so thick that it is cutting my heat down a lot. i want to know if theres anything that will filter, without being so thick and cutting my heat down. i thought about window screening but dont know how well that will filter. any help would be appreciated.

Generally, the filter is installed in the main air plenum intake. I guess you could put one in the outlet instead--but this could collect dust/dirt on your heat exchanger and cause a "hot/cooking/burning" smell (especially at the start of heating season).

If you don't find any filters around your furnace/central heat--I would remove the filters out the heating registers and look for a place to install a filter.

In some very old heaters I have seen (I am no HVAC guy)--it turned out that you unplug and lift the blower assembly out of the furnace and place a standard sized filter right under the blower intake--and place the blower assembly right on the filter.

For my home--I had a very large plenum intake under the floor grid where I could put two 16"x20" filters at a ~30 degree angle. I just got a piece of 1/2" plywood and cut out a frame that could hold the two filters. I screwed on a couple 1"x2" braces behind the frame and used a couple of long screws in the face of the plywood to hold the filters in position. Worked great (I should pull the plywood out someday and give it a coat of paint.

I tilted my filters in the plenum so that I could get as much surface area as possible instead of dropping a filter in front of a 12" diameter intake pipe. If you do not have a place where you can do this--or are unsure what to do--a professional HVAC guy and/or a little duct work may be required.

But in terms of costs--figuring out how to better insulate/seal against air leaks is going to be a money saver in the long run for your family.

-Bill

Re: space heater

There are several types of "permanent" type filters.

• Washable: Just fibers that take washing and not fall apart
• Washable+charged: This have plastic fibers that are formed in a strong electric field so that the fibers have a +/- electrostatic charge on the surface. Supposed to attract smaller particles without using a fine meshed filter (better air flow). I don't know how well they work
• Washable Electrostatic Filters: Uses high voltage electronics and wires/screens to charge the particles and attract them to oppositely charged plates. Would require a change to duct work and installation of hardware. Work well, not cheap. Electronics do fail (aka in-laws home)

Do the "Mike Test" and see if the large vent draws air (most likely) or outputs air (unlikely). That would be where the one and only system filter should be located.

If there is a heating vent nearby--that would normally be a mistake. The heat from the register would be drawn right back into the furnace intake. I would think about blocking the heating register if it is that close to the intake.

Also, if you have "cool" heating registers... You might have uninsulated duct work in the attic or crawl spaces (your home sounds new enough that the duct work should be insulated--my 70 year old home had uninsulated duct work--added metalized bubble wrap to our exposed ducts--made the heated air much warmer from our registers and saved a bunch of natural gas costs too--we also replaced our heater with an 80+% efficient unit too--95% efficient models are also available).

Or, you might have air leaks/broken duct work that is leaking most of of the air elsewhere.

All of the heating vents should have roughly the same temperature output--just different air flow (small rooms, low air flow output; large rooms with big windows, lots of air flow). I have one remote room over a garage that has pretty cool "hot air" because of a long run in an unheated garage (again, some insulation was added to the duct work--but it only helps so much).

-Bill

Re: space heater

That would be my guess...

It should be pretty obvious if you looked at your forced air unit... There should be the inlet side (typically one large/short duct) through the heating/fan unit, then to a box with a bunch of smaller ducts running throughout the home.

You might check for air leaks around inlet box/ducting. I have seen older homes/apartments where they really did not care too much about the inlets. So they would draw air not only from the home but from crawl spaces too (in my case, I used to have water under my home in the winter and it was a bit bad smelling--adding a filter forced more air through the leaks and made the problem worse).

Air leaks were one way to get more fresh air into the home.

-Bill

Re: space heater

If you need to pop of the trim... Take a utility knife and core/cut the paint around each piece of trim. Then use a set of thin pry bars to gently work the trim off to do your insulation job.

If you do it right, just a little bit of putty on the nail holes and a bit of touch up paint and your are done (PS: with your finish nails, cut the point off with a pair of wire cutters--the blunt end will help reduce the chance of splitting the old dry trim--whereas the sharp point will tend to spread the grain and may cause splits).

-Bill