You’ve done your research and now you’re ready to go out and purchase the right air filter for your home’s forced-air heating and cooling system. You know everything there is to know about MERV (Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value) and have decided to go for a MERV 12 filter. You enter the home improvement store, head right to the air filter section and WHAM, you are confronted by filters marked with an FPR rating. MERV is nowhere to be found.
What’s an FPR rating? It stands for Filter Performance Rating and is given by a certain air filter manufacturer on a scale
of 4 to 10. The FPR rating is not issued by a neutral group, unlike MERV, which is handed out by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). The MERV rating system is a standard that allows people to easily compare one type of filter to another. With some companies changing to proprietary FPR and MPR (Microparticle Performance Rating) systems, it can get quite confusing.
The real problem with having multiple rating systems (besides the fact that you have to trust the manufacturers instead of an independent evaluator) is that there are no conversion scales in the stores. Good news; we’ve taken the time translate these new ratings into an equivalent MERV rating for you. FPR with a green rating of 5 is equivalent to a MERV 8 filter. FPR of 7 (red) is the same as a MERV of 11. The purple FPR ratings (8 & 9) are MERV 12 equivalent. And the highest FPR rating, 10 (indicated by blue) is equal to MERV 13.
The MPR system was adopted by the 3M company to rate its air filters. The system rates air filters on a scale of 0 to 2700, although the highest current filter carries a rating of 1900. The 3M filters start at MPR 400 (equal to a MERV 6) and range up to the aforementioned 1900 (MERV 12). They also offer a MPR 600, equal to a MERV 8, and a MPR 1000, equal to MERV 10.
Contact us at Hansberger Refrigeration & Electric Company for all of your home comfort needs. We’re the Yuma area’s HVAC leader since 1952.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Yuma, Arizona about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about MERV ratings and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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