We've had some scorching days this summer, temperatures in the 90s and the feels like temps into the 100s. While there is a cooldown on the way, it won't last. Regardless of the outside temps, ensure you optimize your HVAC system by doing this ONE thing. Ensure your filter isn't stressing your system by not allowing maximum airflow. That often means saying goodbye to those expensive filters and grabbing the cheaper ones.

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I didn't know anything about what kind of stress I was putting on our system when we moved into our home. I knew that I had allergies, and we've always had filters that were priced right in the middle.

Once the temps started to climb this summer, I'd hear a whistling sound in our vents when the AC was running. I'd end up going downstairs, and I'd listen to the system and I wouldn't hear the whistling as much as I would upstairs.

In an effort to find what was making our vents whistle, I changed filters, took floor vent covers off, and searched the duct for something loose or a small hole, and I just couldn't find the source.

After all of that, I called our contractor up, and he agreed to come and take a look, and if needed he would call his HVAC guy to figure it out. Well, embarrassingly for me, it took him about 60 seconds to know that the blower unit was being starved of the air it needed to work efficiently, and to fix it, he pulled out the filter.

As soon as the blower started back up without the filter the whistling stopped. He recommended that we use construction filters, those blue nylon ones you see at the big box stores, to keep the unit working efficiently.

I had no idea.

So the next time you are buying filters for your HVAC unit, you might want to buy one of those cheap blue ones and see if it makes a difference with your unit.

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