Wildfire smoke and your AC: a Boise homeowner's guide
When the valley fills with smoke, your air conditioner becomes an air cleaner. Here's how to run it, which filter to use, and what not to do.
Most summers now bring at least a week when the foothills disappear and the air quality app turns orange or red. Your HVAC system is the best tool you have for keeping that air out of the house, if you run it right.
Close the windows and run the fan. Set the thermostat fan from Auto to On during smoke events so air keeps moving through the filter even when the AC isn't cooling. Every pass through a good filter takes particles out.
Use the right filter. A one-inch fiberglass filter does almost nothing for smoke. A pleated filter rated MERV 11 to 13 catches most of it. If your furnace has a one-inch slot, don't jam a high-MERV one-inch filter in; it can choke airflow. A four- or five-inch media cabinet is the real fix, and it's a quick upgrade.
Change it sooner. During a smoke event a filter loads up in days, not months. Check it weekly and replace it when it's grey.
Don't open the fresh-air intake. If you have a ventilation system that brings in outside air, switch it off until the smoke clears.
Consider a whole-home purifier. If someone in the house has asthma, allergies or a heart condition, a purifier at the air handler treats every cubic foot of air on every cycle and does more than any portable unit.
After the smoke clears, have the outdoor coil washed. Smoke leaves a film that cuts efficiency, and a late-summer coil wash gets the system back to full output for the last hot weeks.
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