The easy process for making homemade filters that are washable and simple to keep clean and germ-free to keep you breathing freely all year long.
Snow is falling, cold wind is blowing. The furnace clicks on.
Uh oh!
What about all that dust and dirt and who knows what else that has collected in the air ducts over the past months?
Here’s a simple solution for keeping the dusty and even moldy muck from spewing into your air and into your lungs when you breathe.
Make your own washable homemade filters!
How to Make Healthy, Homemade Filters
Find an old 100% wool sweater; perhaps at your local Salvation Army and wash it in hot, hot water and simple soap in your washing machine. This is not a time to worry about the delicacy of the sweater. We want it to felt up good and thick, even shrink.
The idea is to tease the fibers into felty submission. Then dry it in a hot dryer. This will further the felting process. Once the sweater is thick and misshapen, measure the perimeter of the register (the opening on the floor where the heat blows out) and cut the sweater to fit neatly into the opening.
The best part is that you don’t need to hem the ends since felted wool doesn’t fray.
It will make a tidy homemade filter that allows the free flow of hot air while offering a hygienic filter.
These homemade filters are as good, if not better, than any pre-made filters from the store and are easily tossed into the washer monthly, so you and your family can breathe freely and not spend a dime!
When the furnace first comes on in the cooler months, clean the filters more often, perhaps even have a few of them already made and fitted.
In your little girl’s room, choose a pink sweater. In your son’s, blue. Homemade filters can color coordinate too!
Simple solutions for a healthier life … made by you.
Our health is in our hands!
For more information on clean indoor air, this article explains the top 10 house plants proven by NASA to filter toxins out of the air that outgas from building materials and household products.
This application is used at the vent, in each room, not anywhere near the furnace. So I wouldn’t call it a furnace filter, but a duct filter. In the houses where I’ve lived, the vents are on the floor and are sometimes called registers. lift up the heavy metal grate that covers the opening to the duct and place the wool flat at the mouth of the duct, making sure it is the exact size of the opening. then replace the metal grate directly atop of your filter. It indeed may make the amount of heat blowing through the grate less efficient, but the heat that is forced thorough will be cleaner.
this is really great!
Great topic.
But there are reusable furnace filters available too
she’s just saying to put it in your heating vent where the heat comes into your room. Not the furnace filter.
Some manufacturers are making healthier vent filters that do not restrict the flow need to operate correctly.
Be careful with these type of applications because they can change the pressures needed for the furnace to operate correctly. It could burn out the motor because you have increased the pressure required to push the air through a now restricted space.
Now what about big, big ones that go on the furnace itself? 🙂
I wonder if I could do something like that to replace one of the filters on my bagless vacuum?
Can you explain exactly how this works. I am having troubles picturing it. I understand how to felt sweaters, but not how to actually use it as a furnace filter. The blogger is talking about using it to replace actual furnace filters correct?