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Air Kontrol has a history of manufacturing quality heating, air conditioning, ventilating, appliance, and air cleaner filters for over 40 years. Filters have been manufactured for NASA, nuclear power plants and submarines, hospitals, electronics manufacturing, and manufacturers of original equipment. Air Kontrol filters have been in use throughout the world.

It doesn't matter if you're an astronaut or a home owner, you can trust Air Kontrol 2 to deliver quality genuine Air Kontrol 2 products to suit your needs.

General Filter Questions

Why does my furnace have an air filter?

Air filters in your furnace/air conditioning system were originally designed to help keep the equipment clean.

But as we have sealed our houses from air infiltration so as to conserve on energy used, we have enveloped ourselves inside an environment that is continuously off-gassing gases and shedding airborne particles. Thus there is a need for better filtration to protect us from the air that we breathe.

Your air ducts can be a breeding ground for germs, bacteria, mold and mildew. Better filtration is required to help stop this contamination that can break off and circulate in your breathing environment.
     

The average home contains over 40 pounds of dust. Each day our respiratory system has to remove over one heaping teaspoon of particulate from the air that we breathe.

Dust is a combination of several substances such as fabrics, cotton linters, feathers, stuffing material, bacteria, mold spores, fungus spores, pollen, food particles, human dander, pet dander, dust mites, hairs, bits of plants and insects. All of this and other compounds found inside and outside your home combine to form household dust.

It enters your home through cracks and crevices, open windows and doors, tracked in by humans, shed from clothes and from other household items. It will settle on your floors and furnishings. It will get back into your breathing environment by being kicked up from floor surfaces, escaping from your vacuum cleaner filter, or picked up and suspended by air currents. The particulate may be so small that it never settles but remains suspended in the air.

The better the filter, the better its ability to filter this contamination from the filtered air.

No! These type filters are sometimes referred to in the industry as "non-filters." Yes, they will trap some airborne particulate, but not as much as genuine Air Kontrol filters.

The smallest visible particle to the naked eye is 14 micron in size. In comparison, a human hair is 30 micron in diameter. So what we are trying to filter from the air is very, very, very small.

If you lay a standard fiberglass filter over newsprint, you can read the headlines through it! So, if the material is so open that you can read through it, how much airborne particulate are you capturing? Very little!

In the beginning, these filters had more filter substrate than they do now. However, as pressure has been exercised to bring the cost and selling price down on these filters, less and less filtering material has been used. The end result is most manufacturers have a filter that you can read newsprint through.
     

No! Genuine Air Kontrol filters for your furnace are one inch deep, and replacement filters will slide into your existing filter track.

The only Air Kontrol retail product that requires retrofit is the Dust Patroller®, which is a ducted cabinet type filter.
     

Your present filter should have the size printed on the filter frame. These sizes are normally indicated as nominal size, which means that the filter is undercut so it will slide into your furnace filter track.

Air Kontrol manufactures standard and non-standard sizes in many type filters. Air Kontrol even offers adjustable size filters that you can adjust down to whatever fractional size that you require. Remember, proper fit for a filter is very important.  This will help eliminate any air bypass that may escape unfiltered around the filter. Air will take the path of least restriction: If there is a gap for the air to go around the filter, it will try to take that course.
     

Cleaning or replacing intervals depend upon your environmental conditions and the amount of filter material surface area. We suggest that you visually inspect your filter every 30 days to determine a maintenance cycle for your environment. If you experience higher people traffic inside your home or construction in or around your home, you may want to clean or replace your filter more frequently.

Excessive dust loading on the filter can cause equipment malfunction and wasted energy. It can also cause too much air resistance, which can force the filter to unload its particulate back into the air stream. This can cause damage to your equipment and extreme contamination to your air ducts.
     

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