We get questions all the time regarding the use of UV lights in residential HVAC units. Where is the best place to position one? How do they work? What is the best use of them?
For a time, Aprilaire offered our own line of UV products. Our recommendation was always to position UV lights near the peak of your A/C’s evaporative coil or “A” coil. Place it in such a way that the coil and drain pan are fully expose to the light. These are the components most likely to contribute to microbial growth as they contain the three things most needed to support it, moisture, a food source, and a dark environment. Plus, even if your home has a whole-house air cleaner, anything growing on your A-coil can enter your air stream after the air cleaner.
Conversely, UV light is not terribly effective as an air cleaner for several reasons. The first is a question of exposure. Particles tend to zip through your air ducts at around 300 feet per minute. What this means is that their actual exposure time is a fraction of what would be required to destroy organic particles. Put another way, if you were baking cookies in your oven (oatmeal raisin, of course) you might be able to tap the edge of the hot baking sheet without getting burned, but if you held your hand there, you would definitely get a serious injury. The concept is the same with UV light. Most particles require a minimum amount of exposure to be considered destroyed, and this can be from a few seconds to a few minutes. And in order to get that exposure time, a particle would have to zip in front of a UV lamp many times. Hopefully, there’s an actual air cleaner on your system to trap those particles so that they don’t get a second chance to zip through your ducts. They would get trapped the first time.
The second reason is simply that, with an air cleaner, once that air cleaner has trapped the particle, destroying it is a little redundant. If an organic particle can’t get back into the air stream, does it matter if it’s alive or dead? Generally not.
So there we go.
The summer wildfire season is upon us. Check out this
link provided by the Indoor Air Quality Association. It offers helpful tips and advice to protect you home and belongings, as well as your health, if you’re in an area stricken by wildfires.
A whole home air cleaner from Aprilaire is a great way to help remove smoke from the air in your home; not only from wildfires but also in the winter when you’ve got the fireplace burning or even from cooking. Now if your in an area close to a wildfire where the smoke is heavy you should leave the area immediately there is no air cleaner that will keep you safe in that situation.
Are you like me and want to have the air in your home as clean as possible? Wanting clean air and having clean air isn’t always the same. You may have an air cleaner installed but how do you know it’s actually cleaning the air. Aprilaire makes air cleaners that not only clean the air in your home they also tell you when the air cleaner is operating. The models 4200 and 4400 have a MERV rating of 13 and the model 5000 is equivalent to a MERV 16. All three include an active control which has 4 active cleaning options; Constant cleaning 24/7 365, Automatic which is one 30 minute cycle per hour, Event clean which is one 3 hour cycle and Allergies which is one 24 hour cycle. Pressing any of these selections allows you to clean the air in your home above and beyond the normal air cleaner operating time during the heating and cooling operation of your HVAC equipment. To learn more visit www.aprilaire.com.
Sound gross? OK, I meant the Mayo Clinic. They're serving up some great information for
allergy sufferers. Controlling excess humidity and dust are keys to controlling dust mites. An air purifier can help with airborne allergens and dust in general. They may not trap alot of actual dust mites.
Still, they recommend keeping the place clean, and that's where an air cleaner with a clean air cleaner filter can help.
And,
humidifiers can help with skin irritations and respiratory problems.
Don't want to listen to Aprilaire bloggers? Who wouldn't want to listen to the experts from the Mayo Clinic?
Maybe. Sure, there are room air purifiers with HEPA filters and fans that can do a decent job of cleaning the air in one room.
Then there are
GadgetS!!!!
As much as I hate to give these guys a link, there it is.
Do you really want to protect your family with a gadget?
If you want a cute toy, go to Toys R Us (or online) and buy a cute toy. If you want effective air cleaning, do your homework. If you insist on a portable, buy the most you can afford in HEPA filtration with a FAN! If you want air cleaning in every room, buy an
air cleaner installed with your HVAC system.
Dehumidify and Ventilate are the two best ways to control or prevent the growth of Mold.
Yes, mold is a nasty thing, especially if you are allergic. AIr cleaners can trap some airborne mold spores but the real key is to dehumidify and ventilate properly.
Of all the information out there about HEPA filters and air purifiers that help rid the air of unwanted allergens, it seems clear that you can benefit from a healthier home environment by using a high-efficiency air cleaning system that will reduce airborne contaminants.
There are plenty of manufacturers' claims about how best to clean the air in your home. Portable air purifiers , or even larger HEPA filters can be pretty effective at cleaning air in one room.
Of course, we believe that for homes with forced air HVAC systems and duct work, using an air cleaner installed within this system, is a more comprehensive and efficient way to clean the air, because it works throughout your house. As your system blower operates, air movement takes place throughout your house and airborne contaminants flow through your return air ducts where an air cleaner captures them before the air is recirculated through your system and back throughout your home.
But let's get beyond the obvious health benefits for a minute. If you're in the market for cleaner air at home and doing your homework to make the best decision, but still struggling with which way to go, consider this.
A high efficiency air cleaner installed with your system also keeps your system cleaner, which keeps it running more efficiently, which in turn saves energy! It also prolongs the life of your HVAC system, which saves you even more money!
Here's proof. This photo compares two air conditioner A-coils; both 10 years old. One from a system that used an Aprilaire air cleaner (left); the other used a standard 1" furnace filter.
A-coils are messy, expensive things to have cleaned; even more expensive to replace.
So consider whole-house air cleaning and also consider preserving your expensive HVAC system and saving energy!
The Surgeon General released a
Call to Action on Tuesday to promote healthy homes. The move involves many different facets of making a home healthy but one of the main things the Surgeon Generals office mentioned was the need to improve indoor air quality “by installing radon and carbon monoxide detectors, eliminating smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke, and controlling allergens that contribute to asthma and mold growth.
So basically what they are saying is put a radon and carbon monoxide detector in your home, don’t smoke in your home or where smoke can get in your home, install a whole home indoor air cleaner to control particulate and control humidity with a humidifier or dehumidifier.
Hmmm….sounds eerily similar to what the Aprilaire bloggers have been posting for months. Check out Aprilaire.com for more information about our indoor air quality solutions.
When the America’s top doc recommends taking steps to improve your indoor air quality it’s probably time to do something about it.
Aprilaire and our network of professional contractors are the answer to your IAQ needs.
Right now everyone is watching there p’s and q’s when it comes to spending money. It’s a tough economic time, and determining what’s important to spend money on and what’s not is something every family and company is doing right now.
One thing most aren’t cutting back on are things like healthy food and regularly scheduled doctor’s visits. Why? Well, those things are too important to you and your family's health. Instead of buying those fan tail shrimp to put in your stir fry you might be eating chicken instead, but you’re still going to make sure your family is getting plenty of nutritious meals. The great Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote “The first wealth is health.” And like the nutritious food you put into your stomach every day the air you put into your lungs each day is just as important.
So don’t skimp on indoor air quality. If you’re having a
contractor come out to clean and check your equipment have him quote an Aprilaire air cleaner, programmable thermostat and depending on where you live a humidifier or dehumidifier (or in many places both).
Tell your contractor you’re interested in improving the quality of your homes air. Any
good contractor will be able to educate you on what you can do to improve your IAQ. You can always give our dedicated customer service team a call at 1-800-334-6011 they too can help you decide on what the best IAQ products are for you.
Aprilaire IAQ products provide clean healthy air to millions of homes across the country. Is yours one of them? If you don’t think indoor air quality is an important part of a healthy lifestyle just Google Indoor Air Quality or Indoor Air Pollution there are vast amounts of good credible information out there.
I remember last winter writing about how dry it is in hotel rooms. That led to an interesting conversation about what to do when you travel. That led to some humorous conversation about when you travel and stay with friends. Only stay with friends who have a whole-house humidifier!!!!
Well, it's allergy time and the same problem exists. What do you do when you travel?
Here's a great article with some tips. And yes, it recommends portable air purifiers, which we say are not very effective. Well. they aren't as effective as continual whole-house air cleaning, but they do work and if you're traveling, they might just help.
Otherwise, call your friends and tell them to install Aprilaire whole-house air cleaner or you'll cancel your visit!!!!! ;)
A common term used when talking about indoor air quality is “Elimination and Ventilation”. I don’t know who coined the term but it is a good way to think about improving indoor air quality. Older homes get natural ventilation because they were built “looser” meaning there was opportunity for fresh outdoor air to make it in the house even when the house was closed up. Mechanical ventilation is something that has become more and more popular with the improvements to home building practices. Nowadays homes are built much “tighter” and although keeping the cold winter air or hot summer air out is an excellent way to save energy it also creates a situation where indoor air quality suffers. By not bringing in fresh air all the bad stuff like volatile organic compounds, fireplace smoke, tobacco smoke, particulates put in the air from cooking, carbon dioxide, bioaerosol, biological contaminants, dust…..the list goes on and on, build up in your home.
The best way to combat the buildup of bad things in your air is to ventilate with fresh air and eliminate the particulate with an effective whole home air cleaner that removes the stuff from the air.
As I’ve blogged about before a programmable thermostat is an easy inexpensive way to save money and energy on your heating and cooling costs….IF you program it. So if you don’t have a programmable thermostat, get one! If you have one, program it!
Once you’ve done that go to www.2degreepledge.org and take the 2 Degree Pledge. According to the website “The 2 Degree Pledge is a simple call-to-action aimed to focus consumer attention on ways to save energy by properly using and maintaining their cooling and heating systems, and if it is time to replace old, inefficient equipment, how to make sure it is installed correctly.” Nowhere did I find on the website a suggestion to actually turn down your thermostat 2 degrees, but imagine if everyone in the country did, it would save millions of dollars in energy costs not to mention give mother nature an awesome reprieve. The thing I really like about the 2 Degree Pledge and the ideas they offer to save energy is they aren’t asking you to sacrifice comfort for energy savings. Also, if you take the pledge the campaign will send you a free informational brochure called A Greener Planet Begins at Home.
Aprilaire offers programmable thermostats along with everything else you need to make your home greener including whole home air cleaners, humidifiers and dehumidifiers.
The rule of 1,000 is what air researchers use to describe how much more potent indoor air pollution is then outdoor air pollution. Basically, anything released into the air indoors is 1,000 times more likely to be breathed in than that same thing being released outdoors. Bottom line indoor air pollution can be very, very potent and potent pollution is never a good thing for your health.
I learned about the rule of 1,000 from an article in the New York Times…the article says that burning a candle is combustion and just like smoking a cigarette indoors it will have similar health effects too.
Your covering up odors with air fresheners you say…one of the doctors quoted in the article says “it’s just adding chemicals on top of chemicals.”
The best way to control indoor air is to filter it with a whole home air filter, and Aprilaire offers the best air cleaners on the market. From the Aprilaire 4000 series with a standard MERV 13 filter to the Aprilaire Model 5000 EAC which has been proven by third party testing to be the most efficient and effective air cleaner on the market, you are protected. Unlike the standard low efficiency high resistance to air flow(which means wasted energy) 1” inch filter you buy at the hardware store you only have to replace your filter once a year, and you have the piece of mind knowing that Aprilaire provides the worlds best IAQ products.
A few have asked me recently, with the Swine Flu outbreak, can a high efficiency air cleaner safeguard my house against the flu?
The real answer is NO! Our Aprilaire Model 5000 Electronic Air Cleaner is the best installed whole-house air cleaner on the market and it DOES trap virus-sized particles. Because if this, there is the potential, if a virus particle attaches itself to a piece of dust that is airborne , that the virus will be permanently trapped and will not re-enter your living space.
In that way, the air cleaner might help reduce the spread of the virus. BUT THERE IS NO WAY IT WILL TRAP IT ALL! A virus that someone leaves on a hard surface may never be airborne so the Aprilaire air cleaner cannot help that---- NO air cleaner can!
Take all the precautions that the pros tell you about the spread of the flu.
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