What to look for in an Air Purifier. After you’ve read through our blog post on what to look for in an air purification system for your home, you’ll learn:
- How air purifiers work and how to find a good one for your needs
- What the various types of air purifiers are
- Why your family may benefit from an effective air purifier in your home
Why Air Purifiers Are Gaining Popularity
It’s important to take steps that improve indoor air quality whenever you can. One of the most effective solutions to this issue is using an air purifier inside your home, office, or other places where you spend a lot of time.
However, not all air purifiers are built the same (or even use the same technology to rid the air of pollutants and contaminants). Before you pull out your credit card to purchase the first air purifier you see, you should read through our guide below on what to look for in an air purifier and how to ensure it fits your specific needs.
Can Air Purifiers Help?
Ideally, the best way to improve your indoor air quality is by removing the sources of the pollutants or allergens contaminating your air. Ensuring your indoor space is well ventilated is a great first step, as it will keep a source of fresh air running through the indoor space.
However, there are times when easy access to ventilation or removing the allergen source is impossible. A beloved family pet may add their dander to the air that you breathe, but convincing your children that Spike needs to be re-homed isn’t an option.
In these situations, an air purifier can be extremely helpful. While air purification systems hook up to a home’s HVAC system to purify the entire residence, most air purifiers people purchase tend to clean the air in a single room.
Regardless, even in a well-ventilated room, an air purification solution will benefit you. They’ll remove lingering pollutants, allergens, and contaminants and keep the air inside the room clean and fresh.
The best solutions have been known to help remove COVID-19 particles. In fact, ActivePure is the first line of air purifiers scientifically proven to decontaminate 99.98% of COVID-19 in the air and on surfaces.
What Makes a Good Air Purifier?
The best air purifier is one that helps your specific needs. That means you may find an inexpensive model that works far better for what you require than a more expensive one with a fuller list of features.
To ensure your needs are met, you should consider five key features on every air purifier you research:
- Design: If you want a purifier that you’ll carry from room to room, you’ll want a lightweight one. If you have a smart home system, you may want one that you can control by Wi-Fi or through a smart speaker. As a general rule, you want something intuitive and easy to use, what we might call a “plug and purify” solution.
- Energy use: Some air purifiers use more energy than others. That may mean that while you’re improving your indoor air quality, you’re also increasing your monthly energy bill. You should try to avoid models that use more than 100 watts on their highest setting.
- Maintenance cost: At some point, you’ll need to replace the filter inside the purifier. If the filters are proprietary and expensive, your initial investment may end up with additional costs. Some filters are washable, too, which means that you only need to clean them once a month or so instead of keeping a steady supply on hand. We generally recommend looking for something easy to clean.
- Noise level: If you need a quiet purifier to focus, you need to keep an ear out for which purifiers are louder than others. Some air purifiers are as quiet as a whisper. Some are very loud, like a vacuum cleaner or rush hour traffic. If you’re looking for something for your home or office, it might be ideal to find something quiet that doesn’t produce unintended side effects of any type.
- Type of filters: Different filters filter out different air contaminants. For instance, if you’re looking to filter out cigarette smoke, you might need a carbon filter.
Types of Air Purifiers
There are many types of air purifiers, and each has its own characteristics:
- Activated carbon filters: Air purifiers that use these filters can remove some gases and odor-causing molecules from the air by absorbing them into the filter. However, they don’t capture particles like dust, dander, or dirt.
- Ionizers: These purifiers release charged ions into the air that seek out airborne molecules and make them stick to surfaces in your home. With regular vacuuming or dusting, you’ll then remove these pollutants from your home instead of having them linger in the air.
- Mechanical filters: Mechanical filters are perhaps the most common form of air purification technology. A fan forces air through a series of overlapping fine mesh filters. With the best air filters, these devices can filter out most forms of dander, dust, mold spores, and pollen. However, they won’t remove gas or odor.
- Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation: UVGI purifiers use ultraviolet late to kill bacteria, mold spores, and viruses. However, unless this technology is combined with the filter type listed above, odors and pollutants will still linger in your air.
- ActivePure – Other types of air purification systems have had their places in recent years, but there’s nothing quite like ActivePure technology. Unlike the passive filters mentioned above, ActivePure is a filterless system that actively purifies the air in your home. ActivePure Molecules are powerful oxidizers that seek and destroy contaminants in every corner of a building. Within hours, ActivePure can reduce 99.98% of viruses on surfaces and in the air. Examples of such DNA and RNA viruses include SARS-CoV-2 (novel coronavirus), Swine Flu (H1N1), Avian Bird Flu (H5N8), and Hepatitis A (HAV), among others. To put this in perspective, ActivePure is the only certified space technology created in cooperation with NASA to protect Astronauts onboard the International Space Station.
The Right Air Purifier for Your Room Size
The best air purifier for your needs will also be based on the size of the space in which it works. A small purifier will be overworked in a large space while spending big money on a huge system doesn’t make much sense if you just need to improve the indoor air quality in a small room.
Some models list a metric called “air changes per hour.” It’ll show you how often it can purify the air in a specific sized space in a single hour. For instance, a model may turn over the air in a 500-square foot space ten times an hour. However, in a 1000-square foot space, that number may drop to five.
Another metric to pay attention to is the clean air delivery rate. A purifier’s CADR rating will give you a better understanding of how effective it is at filtering specific particles in various sized rooms.
The EPA estimates that in a room with an eight-foot ceiling and footprint of 500 square feet, you’ll need a purifier with a CADR rating of at least 325. A 200-square foot room with the same ceiling height requires a CADR of at least 130.
If you’re using an advanced solution like ActivePure, you’ll likely be able to purify your air and surfaces without spending nearly as much, as ActivePure is a whole-home solution that covers the whole house rather than a single room. To identify and implement a custom solution, you can contact A-Z Air Ducts in Phoenix for a prompt response. One of the many great things about ActivePure is that it’s a “plug and purify” technology, so you don’t have to worry about extensive or expensive installations.
Can Air Purifiers Help Your Family?
Air purifiers can play a significant role in keeping you and your family healthy. If you have young children, an air purifier in their room can significantly reduce the number of pollutants they’re breathing as they play, study, or sleep.
If anyone in your family has allergies, an air purifier can also help reduce the number of trips to the doctor or the pharmacy for allergy medicine. That means an air purifier can be a worthy investment both in your family’s health and in your checking account.
Especially now, as the whole world struggles to recover from a global pandemic, it is incredibly important to protect our health where we live and work. This is why many air purification experts recommend state-of-the-art solutions like ActivePure technology. In addition to actively filtering the air in your home rather than passively waiting for it to waft through, ActivePure also avoids issues with other purification methods like noise, electricity consumption, and having to constantly replace filters.
A-Z Air Duct is Here For All Your Indoor Air Quality Needs
A-Z Air Duct is the premier indoor air quality expert of Phoenix, Maricopa County, and beyond! We offer a variety of residential indoor air quality services, all of which are designed to effectively assess your home’s interior pollution level and quickly resolve the issue. We use active methods of purifying your home’s air, which gives you superior purification to passive systems that only use mechanical filters.
Call us today at 602-466-2234 for a free quote or to schedule an appointment. We look forward to introducing you to what’s possible thanks to innovations like ActivePure!
Image Source: New Africa / Shutterstock
