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Allergy Relief Air Purifier.com
No spin, just common sense!
A portion of our sales is proudly donated to our local Habitat for Humanity home builds.
How do we find the best room air purifier? First we have to answer how to clean the air. That is what fresh air purifiers do. They actually scrub the air clean and then send it back out for you to enjoy. Keep this in mind as we approach this issue with common sense. Do not go to my Compare page until you have read this basic information!
Whole house air cleaner or room air purifier?
Since getting into the indoor air quality business, I have found that there is an abundance of air quality solutions available. This initially sounds like a good thing, but the sheer number of brands, styles, sizes, etc., just makes it confusing.
The real question is very simple. Do you want to clean the air in all of your rooms or only one room at a time?
Whole house air cleaning
It would seem that if I want the best home air purifier, it would be very expensive. Trust me, there are a lot of national brands out there that hope you think that way.
Many of them expect you to be desperate or fearful enough to think that your health must be worth at least $1,500.00! I say, enough of the expensive, shiny boxes that have more cost than just the purchase price. Your installation and maintenance costs will continue to dog your checkbook through the coming years!
Fortunately, science is available to more than the greedy. A whole home air cleaner is now available to the common homeowner at a fraction of the price! Installation and maintenance is a snap and very affordable. Click here for more information about allergy relief at home and the best home air purifier.
Room air purifying
Towers, consoles, electrostatic, ultraviolet, ozone, ionizer, you are getting stressed already! The choices are endless and how is anyone to know which ones really work? We all know that ozone is bad for your lungs (www.epa.gov). That is what puts cracks on rubber tires. Ionizers charge particles and if they do not get caught in the filter, they end up on you!
One thing you have to remember about portable units as a whole, all manufacturers are concerned with the sale price. Costs have to be cut to make an air purifier sell for $100-200. I have yet to find a portable unit in this price range that does much of anything.
On the other hand, just because a unit costs $800-900 does not ensure that it is effective for allergy treatment. You must have the ability to purify the air in a large area. You must also have at least one air change per hour. A typical central furnace system runs about 4-6 changes per hour. You also want some features to include automatic air monitoring, filter change monitor and UV lamp change monitor.
Oh yeah, I have not told you about UV light yet. Ultra-violet light is used in hospitals, government buildings, barbershops, anywhere you need to kill germs and bacteria. The light outright kills the germs and bacteria within 2 inches of the bulb and alters its DNA so it can not reproduce within 24 inches of the bulb. Fairly important for allergy treatment (www.lungusa.org). Click here for more information on allergy relief at home and the best room air purifiers.
In my research, I have found that, to date, there is no reason to look any further than these two simple solutions.
Physics of Air
Air, like anything else in nature, will take the path of least resistance. If you do not have a sealed system, the air will try to escape around the filter. The result is dirty air and an annoying whistling sound. Passive filters act as a stopper to your airflow. If you have a high efficiency filter, you get low air flow. If you opt for higher air flow, you lose efficiency. Efficiency just means the percent of particles captured (for example, a 10% filter captures 10% of the particles it is rated for). One product on the market, the Purifan, uses the premise of a ceiling fan for purification. Claiming to move 2,000 cubic feet per minute (cfm), it draws the air up through the middle and blows it out the outer edge of the cowl. I think they must have missed a typo. Most ceiling fans move less than 200 cfm with the aid of extended blades. This kind of air handling is comparable to a large industrial roof top unit. Not only is this physically impossible, but this machine would sound like a jet engine! Do not be pulled in by neat designs and gimmicks. The laws of physics apply no matter how different the design!
Microns and Particle counting
Most of your filters and fresh air purifiers will measure their efficiency by how small of a particle it will trap or how many particles it removes. The biggest tip-off that a room air purifier or filter is not adequate will be the admission of removing large allergens. This is generally all particles larger than 1 micron. A micron is one millionth of a meter. Although very small, these are considered large particles by industry standards. When cleaning air, you are looking for efficiency in the 95% range or better, down to 0.3 microns or better. Most viruses and bacteria are about 0.3 micron on average.
Beware of particle counting when testing even the best room air purifiers. Most manufacturers will test the exhaust of the machine when counting particles. As the inhabitant of the room to be purified, you want to know what the particle count is in the room, not at the exhaust port of the machine! Again, marketing instead of common sense.
Air Purifier Basics
