It is always our HVAC teams goal for you to experience total indoor air comfort. For someone with allergies or sensitivities the air inside their home can significantly impact their quality of life and their overall health. And there are also many people who just want the cleanest air possible in their home in Ottawa.

We carry an array of different solutions to ensure that your air is clean to breathe when you are at home. The easiest and most affordable solution to cleaning your air is to install a larger filter cabinet with a larger filter. This results in more particulates and other irritants being removed from the air circulation resulting in cleaner air.

Although there are several factors to consider when choosing a filtration system, common concerns for people are allergens. The more sensitive a person is to allergens, the greater the need for a high-efficiency filtration system.

We carry in stock a 5 inch filter that offers a great balance of cost, efficiency, and longevity. And of course this filter delivers comfortable air throughout your home. Check out our featured furnace and air conditioner filter systems below:

MERV rating is the system used to rate the efficiency of a filter. MERV stands for minimum efficiency reporting values and is determined by the size of particulate a filter can catch.  The lower the MERV rating the larger the particles that can pass through the filter. 

Standard 1 inch filters that you buy at the hardware store generally range from 6-11 in MERV rating.  AirZone HVAC Services always recommends at least a MERV 11 fitler on the furnace to ensure not only the purity of the air in your home but also to protect the blower of the furnace from becoming caked with dust and debris. MERV 13 and even MERV 16 fitlers are available to those who are concerned about the quality of the air in the home. These filters aid in delivering hospital grade air throughout the home.

Of course we all want pure, clean air in our homes but as HVAC designers we must caution our clients on the restriction certain filters can cause.  The higher the MERV rating, naturally, the more restrictive the filter becomes. This can mean poor airflow throughout your home and can also damage your heating and cooling systems. 

MERV 11-MERV13 1 inch filters are very popular in hardware stores today. These filters are extremely restrictive and we always caution consumers about using these. Allow an expert from AirZone HVAC to aid you in finding a filtration system that not only cleans your air but also suits your home’s HVAC system.

With so many diverse heating and cooling systems in Ottawa and the Valley there are many different types of furnace air filters that we come across in the field. As we have outlined above the most important requirement for a furnace air filter is that it is changed regularly. But the frequency is also changed based on the size of the filter.

We install a lot of upgraded filter cabinets that allow for a larger 5 inch filter to be installed. The advantage of this filter is that it has more surface area on the filter itself. For example, picture a typical 1 inch filter and a 5 inch filter side by side. They both are made with a zig zag pattern almost like an accordion. Now imagine that both of these filters are stretched out and flat. The 5 inch filter is huge in comparison to the one inch furnace filter! Now imaging air being blown through both of these filters.

We hope this illustration shows just how much of a difference a larger filter can make versus a smaller one. The major advantage of the larger filter is that by distributing the air over a larger area there is not as much of a need for a tighter filter. Now think about the furnace efficiency for a second. Most Ottawa homeowners want the best air quality. Although a tighter and more restrictive fitler will provide better filtration resulting in cleaner air, this happens at the expense of efficiency. The furnace now has to work harder to push air through the fitler. By expanding the surface area of the fitler a less restrictive filter is no longer required to achieve the same result. This is why we typically recommend an upgraded furnace filter cabinet in Ottawa to our customers.