VIDEO: QUICK TIPS #17: Save on Energy Costs with Air Filters

ANDREA HOWARD: Hello and welcome to QUICK TIPS from MSC Industrial Supply, a show where the manufacturing community shares their expertise with us. Today's tip comes from our partners at PRO-SOURCE who suggest knowing the minimum efficiency rating values, or MERV, on air filter products for your home or business. Let's check it out.

JASON BOARD: So standard capacity MERV 8 pleat typically changed on say like a quarterly basis.

BUDDY KULP: Okay.

JASON BOARD: But when you're looking at an air filter and you really go look at the total cost of ownership.

BUDDY KULP: Okay.

JASON BOARD: So obviously product cost is always important, very important to the customer, but educating them on the total cost of ownership is what our sales team will do for you guys.

The single largest cost when you're reviewing total cost of ownership is the energy cost. Makes up about 81% of the total cost of ownership just to push air through the air filter. Most customers are overlooking that. And as energy costs have risen, that's becoming more top of mind. So if they're using a standard capacity pleat like we have here, we may look to upgrade them to a high-capacity pleat.

So when you put these side by side, you can see there's more pleats per foot. so there's about 30% more media in the high-capacity pleat. So 30% more media equals about 30% longer life. So where they're changing the standard capacity every quarter, they can now extend those changeouts to every 120 days. So it's a MERV 10 high-capacity pleat.

JASON BOARD: You may be asking, what's MERV?

BUDDY KULP: I was just thinking that.

JASON BOARD: MERV stands for minimum efficiency rating value. That's what our industry uses to regulate how efficient a filter is. Typically, the higher MERV rating, the more efficient the filter is.

BUDDY KULP: Okay.

JASON BOARD: So to put it in layman's terms, MERV 10 captures more dust than a MERV 8. So you're getting a more efficient filter, better equipment protection, better occupancy protection.

You still get all the advantages of the high-capacity pleat. So you extended the changeout cycles. This is a wire-back pleat, which is slightly different than the self-supported pleat. It's a different media. This media actually gets a lower resistance, and resistance is directly tied to the energy cost.

ANDREA HOWARD: For more information on the PRO-SOURCE air filters, visit www.mscdirect.com/prosource. I'd like to thank Buddy Kulp of MSC and Jason Board of MSG for sharing with the audience their best practices for proper air filtration. And thank you for joining us on QUICK TIPS.