This is a pretty strange post, but I figured that it might be useful for someone trying to decide what type of air filter to get for their house.

We had been at our place for a while and there’s a recommendation that people should replace the air filter for their air conditioning system every 3 or so months. We hadn’t done it in a while so I figured why not? Previously our system had an air filter that had charcoal built into it. Which is great if you cook at home, have your shoes in an area that you’re usually around, or a bird that makes a lot of smells. For the shoes there’s actually these packs of charcoal that you can get, which work pretty well at absorbing the smell and moisture from shoes.

I have a yellow napped amazon parrot named Jay. He makes a lot of dust, noise and smells, so the charcoal filter is good way of cleaning a but of that up… minus the noise. I’m thinking about creating a system with an aquarium below him to complete the circle of life and eliminate the smells altogether, but I’m still only in the planning stages.

Back to the filters. When I was deciding to replace the filter I figured that we might as well replace it with a basic filter that gets the job done, and it did, for a while. But then I realized that it wasn’t working as well as the previous air filter. It did nothing for smells, and when I last checked it, it was already dark from all the dust that it absorbed over a short period of time.

During the winter season, air conditioning isn’t that important other than using the heater. But we tried using the heater and the entire house smelled like burning dust. Probably need to clean out the vents or something. But it’s not a big deal, and it’s not like it gets too cold in Southern California. We opted to using a heated blanket instead which worked extremely well.

The reason that I’m writing a post about air filters is because summer is approaching and it does get really hot here. To the point where you just need to close all your windows and let the AC run. Other wise it’s going to be difficult to enjoy the day eg; being tired from the heat all day and having trouble sleeping at night because it’s so hot.

I’m probably going to go back to using a carbon air filter to help with filtering the air in the house, as well as getting rid of the smells from cooking. In terms of cooking there’s also another interesting solution: cooking outside. Although not everyone has access to this option, getting an outdoor stove top connected to a propane tank is actually pretty effective. We have on outside next to the smoker (which I’m going to post about in the future 😄)

The only thing I probably need to set up next is a sink system and a prep area. That way the entire cooking process can take place outside. This would free up the indoor kitchen to focus on things that need to be boiled or baked.

To sum this post up, getting a charcoal filter is worth it. I’m not sure whether the suggested time frame to replace air filters is really accurate, it probably depends on how often you utilize it. In our case, we don’t use it everyday, so it might make more sense for us to not have to replace the filters as often.

Hope everyone has a nice summer!

As always, thanks for reading!