Furnaces need to be cleaned and serviced.
After a furnace is 5 years old it is considered good practice to have them serviced every year.
In spite of the fact that the furnace in the following picture had not been serviced for quite some time it is “relatively” clean. Visible in the picture is the remains of the furnace filter that has been sucked into the blower. All that remains is the cardboard frame marked “16x20x1.” I did a previously post about this called, Why is there a squirrel in my furnace? Time to get your furnace serviced.
One can also see the return air duct entering the furnace compartment at the left—just the other side of the ruined filter—-it is relatively clean looking.
The return duct in this next picture is not so clean looking. The view is looking straight down, eight feet, from the living room floor.
From this view I know I am in for a “treat” inside the furnace compartment. This next picture is looking inside the furnace compartment and there is no filter in sight. All air in the home circulates through this mess and back into the house.
At this point your lungs are filtering the air.
“Cough.”
***
Charles Buell, Seattle Home Inspector
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Hi! I really appreciate your blog as I’ve just bought a house. Do you know….if the filter in missing from the furnace, would that affect the performance of the furnace (it’s high-efficiency)
thanks!
Joy
Joy, having no filter can result in dust accumulating in the heat exchanger where it could cause damage to the heat exchanger shortening the life of the furnace as well as result in blowing all dirt in the air back into the house instead of being filtered out. Blowing normal household unfiltered air back into the house is perhaps worse than any likely damage to the furnace. If you were doing any remodeling the materials that might end up in the furnace could be harmful to the furnace.