Home Air Cleaners: Portable Or Whole-House?

Home air cleaners represent one approach to the problem of poor indoor air quality. In air-tight, energy-efficient homes, airborne particulates often accumulate to concentrations that far exceed what you would be exposed to in the great outdoors. Many of these, such as pollen, mold spores, dust and pet dander are allergens that can trigger symptoms in susceptible individuals.

Home air cleaners function as control devices that limit the amount of airborne particulates at any given time. While they don’t address the pollution problem at its source nor improve indoor ventilation, home air cleaners can contribute to improved air quality and are available in both portable room units as well as whole-house systems.

• Portable room cleaners cleanse the air in enclosed spaces only. A portable air cleaner should be properly sized to the room where it will be utilized by matching its airflow rate to the volume of air in the room. A unit that turns over the entire air volume in the room at least twice per hour will reduce pollution levels. The CADR rating (clean air delivery rate) available on many air cleaners expresses the filtering efficiency of the unit for certain common particulates. The higher the CADR, the more effective the air cleaner.

• Whole-house air cleaners utilize air circulation through the existing central air and heating ductwork to clean the entire volume of air in the home. Mounted inside the ducts, whole-house cleaners filter the air multiple times per day as it circulates through the ductwork. These systems range from simple mechanical filtration with pleated filter media to more advanced systems that incorporate electrostatic filtration and disinfecting ultraviolet lights to destroy microorganisms like bacteria and viruses. Whole-house HEPA filters can be installed in bypass loops connected to the ducts to provide medical-grade filtration that removes over 99 percent of particulates down to a size of .30 microns.

For more information on home air cleaners and how you can improve your home environment, contact Sobieski Services.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Wilmington, Delaware and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC & plumbing systems).

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