Can You Run A Furnace Without A Filter Temporarily? (Find Out Now!)

The air filter plays an important role in your furnace. Aside from the fact that it is meant to catch the dirt and debris in the air, it can play an important role in the overall air quality of your home. Moreover, a dirty filter can cause a number of issues with your furnace.

There may be a reason why your filter needs to be pulled out and can’t be replaced immediately. That leads to the question “can I run my furnace without a filter?” Technically speaking, yes, you can, but there are consequences for doing so. It could mean polluted ducts, decreased air quality, and even system failure.

While it seems crazy to consider, there are everyday occurrences where you may not have a filter in place while running your furnace. The biggest reason is that you may find your filter to be excessively dirty and not doing its job.

Filters are disposable and are meant to be changed out relatively frequently (generally monthly). You might be tempted to remove that filter and simply let the system run. Temporarily, it may be fine, but the word cannot be emphasized enough.

It is completely inadvisable to run your furnace for more than a day or two without a filter. The filter is in place to improve the overall quality of air in your home, but there is more to it than that. The air filter plays an integral role in the successful and continued operation of your furnace as well.

To put it simply running your furnace without a filter is the quickest way to reduce the quality of air in your home and it will lead to damage in your system. Do not go longer than necessary without an air filter in your furnace.

The biggest issue with running a furnace without an air filter is that the overall air quality in your home will decrease. Think about it this way: without a filter, there is nothing in place to prevent debris and dust from getting sucked into the furnace and distributed throughout your home.

Inferior air quality can be difficult to notice until it becomes a real problem. Poor air quality can lead to increased allergies and even long-term respiratory issues if left unchecked. Even if you have air purifiers in your home, they will have to work overtime to filter out those allergens that would have been otherwise caught by the furnace’s air filter.

Without the filter in place to catch those allergens and pollutants, they have to end up somewhere else. If they don’t get distributed into the air that you breathe, guess where they will settle? In your ductwork.

And since there is moisture present in the air in most instances, that means that conditions are optimal for mold growth within your ducts. Declined air quality is bad enough but when mold gets introduced into the equation, you can be facing serious long-term respiratory issues.

Make no mistake, air quality is one of the most important things concerning your filter. But there is far more at play than that. The filter has one primary function that has nothing to do with the quality of air. That is to protect the furnace itself.

When the air filter is gone or not working properly, the inner components of the furnace can easily become coated with dirt and grime. Things like flame sensors and evaporator coils can and will fail because of that excessive dirt. Your filter would normally be there to protect it and won’t be able to do so any longer.

When it comes to the health of your furnace and the air quality in your home, your filter remains the most important piece of the puzzle. It is recommended that you change out the filter on a monthly basis, which can seem like a hassle.

But stop to consider all of the things that can and will go wrong if your filter doesn’t get changed on a regular basis. Preventative maintenance, like changing out the filter, can go a long way towards preserving the overall health and efficiency of your furnace.

• Shorted ignitor. The ignitor does just that: ignites the gas created by the gas valve, allowing for the creation of warm air. The warm air is then distributed throughout the home. When the ignitor is bad, it will short out and there will be no warm air created.
• Stuck safety switch. There are safety components built into each furnace. When the safety switch gets triggered, because it senses overheating, it can become stuck and you may have to reset the entire system. Dirty evaporator coils can have the same result, giving you another damaged component that needs replacing.

Even though they seem like a relatively simple component, the air filter can lead to escalated costs from your furnace. There are the components listed above that can become dirty or damaged and stop working entirely.

And then there is the aspect of increased utility bills. Dirty furnaces will have to work harder to ensure that your home is heated properly. The harder it has to work, the less efficient that it becomes. If you haven’t even considered your filter being an issue, elevated energy bills can be the thing that gets your attention.