Indoor Air Quality and Air Quality Testing
Air Filtration and Allergies
There are several ways today to help keep the air in your home clean and healthy.
The first way to help clean the air in your home is by allowing the air to be filtered as it passes through the air mover of your heating and air conditioning system. This is most commonly accomplished by passing the air through an air filter. There are different types of air filters.
Air filters have different costs, and they have widely different efficiencies in their ability to filter the air. Basically, the smaller the spaces between the fibers in the air filters, the better they filter and the more that they probably will cost.
It is important to know that you can't just make filters more efficient (make the spaces in the filter smaller) or the air mover (blower) of your air conditioning and heating system may not force a sufficient amount of air through the filter. This will make the system to malfunction because of low air flow. This is exactly what happens when your system tries to operate with a dirty or restricted filter. You can not get enough air through the filter and the system is forced to malfunction. If not for the need for proper air flow to make your home's comfort system work correctly, you could leave dirty filters in your system. A dirty filter is a very efficient filter. So efficient, in fact, that it will not let enough air through the system causing it to malfunction.
The most common filter is a 1" think filter composed of a weave of fiberglass strands. These filters usually have a light cardboard frame. They are the most common because they are the least expensive. They are not very efficient and do not filter well. They are, however, much better than a system with no filters.
Go To: Top of the Page.
Pleating a filter allows for more square footage of filter media within the same sized filter frame. Because you have more area of filter, the filter can be made more dense (smaller spaces). This allows the filter to remove smaller particles because the spaces in the filter are smaller.
Go To: Top of the Page.
The Large Pleated Polycotton Filter
The next level of mechanical filters is a large pleated filter. Instead of the filter being 1" think, the filter is 8" thick and has narrow pleats. This allows for a much larger filtering area and consequently the filter can be much more dense (much smaller spaces). The difference between this and a standard filter might be described this way. If the smallest particle that a standard filter could trap from the air was a basketball, this filter would remove a grain of sand. This is a much, much more efficient filter and is becoming increasingly popular in making a clean home environment.
Go To: Top of the Page.
In the last several years we have seen the rising popularity of what are called electrostatic filters. These are 1" thick filters that are composed of layers of plastic mesh. The air passing through the filter causes static electricity in the filter. The particles in the air pick up this static charge and are then attracted to and are caught in the plastic mesh internally in the filter. These filters are very restrictive on the blower motor and duct system.
Go To: Top of the Page.
This works similarly to the electrostatic air filter, but much better. This filter uses a small amount of electricity as 115 volt house power is converted to approximately 5000 volts DC This high voltage is applied to a series of small stainless steel wires on the inlet of the filter. Particles passing by these wires become electrically charged by the high voltage in the ionizing wires. Then the positively charged particles are attracted to and collected on a negatively charged aluminum grid. Very efficient, and fairly expensive.
Go To: Top of the Page.
The ultimate filter is the AccuClean system. It removes 99.98% of air born particles down to .3 micron. AccuClean works similar to the electronic filter but delivers more than40% more clean air. With a new design in the way the ionizing grid made these filters change 100% of the particles passing through the grid and collect in a newly designed collection cell.
Go To: Top of the Page.
Variable drive blowers are a relatively new innovation for the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning industry. Homeowners are more frequently choosing furnaces, air conditioners, and coil blowers with this innovative, highly efficient air mover.
There are numerous consumer benefits with variable drive blowers:
They use much less electricity than conventional blowers. Typically, a variable drive blower will use only 30% of the electricity of a conventional air mover. This is a significant energy savings.
They make your environment more comfortable because of the way they operate. They do not come on with a large rush of air. Variable drive blowers slowly ramp up to speed, and shut off the same way. They slowly ramp down to off. The operation of a variable drive blower might be described this way. You do not hear the blower start. But, at some point you become aware that there is air movement caused by the operating air mover.
Variable drive blowers have more versatility in adjustment of the air being delivered. We can actually set the amount of air we are delivering into your home.
Variable drive blowers allow your cooling system to work more efficiently under a broader ranger of conditions. They can, for example, change themselves to remove higher amounts of humidity when needed. Imagine a spring day where the temperature is not excessive, but the humidity is very high. An air conditioning system with a variable drive blower can be set up to recognize this high humidity condition and to help relieve it without over cooling your home to an uncomfortably low temperature.
Probably the biggest advantage to the variable drive blower is how much it can help in creating a clean home environment for those of you who suffer from some kind of allergy. If you are trying to create a clean home environment, the more time that is spent cleaning the air, the less allergy contaminants will remain in the air in your home. Reduced contaminants translate to less allergic reactions. This means a comfortable, sneeze free, home environment for you and your family.