Looking to buy an air cleaner? If so, AFP - Air Filters and Purifiers would like to offer the consumer a buying guide on air purifiers that addresses the many aspects of this market. We will help you select from the many air purifiers and find the one system that best meets your needs. Here are seven areas you should consider to ensure air quality you need at a price you can afford.
Choice Considerations
1. What Do You Need?
Are you an allergy sufferer, do you have asthma, live near roads or factories, have pets or are you just concerned about your general health? Some systems in the market are highly effective at removing very small particulates from the air. Some are not. Some are better at eliminating odors. And others purifiers, designed specifically for allergy and asthma suffers. Which problem are you trying to solve? Pick air cleaners that best fit what you are trying to fix. Be careful. There are cheap air purifiers that are not effective at solving any of these areas of concern. In contrast, you can find air purifiers specifically designed and refined for each of these areas. Make sure that the system you choose can remove at least 99.97% of all air particles including the very fine ones as small as .3 microns. It is these small particulates that can bypass our body's defense system and negatively impact our health.
When searching for air purifiers, find the one that bring solutions to runny noses, sinus problems, allergies, and/or removes lung penetrating particulates. A system that is able to reduce your risk to heart disease, cancer and stroke.
2. Determine Best Cost
It is not necessarily the upfront price of the air purifiers that is your sole consideration of long-term cost. You may find that you spend less up front but will spend a lot more for a replacement filter and parts. Some air purifiers need to have filters changed after 6 months to a year of use. Others systems may have expensive electronics parts that need to be replaced. Cheap air purifiers may be built with cheap motors that do not last long. The poor motors may not only breakdown quickly but likely will be very expensive to operate. Cheap ionic air purifiers may have inexpensive electronics that do not last. Always consider the life cycle cost of your purifier.
Look for air purifiers that have filter replacement every 5 years, come with warranties and inexpensive pre- filtering.
3. Difficultly of Maintaining
Routine maintenance may be difficult to do. Certain infomercials show how easy it is to replace their product parts. This may not be true. They can be complicated and take lots of time to dissemble and reassemble. For example, many of the ionic air purifiers have to be completely disassembled and require parts to be cleaned with chemicals or toss in to a dishwasher. Then after an hour or so, these same parts need to be reassembled back into the system. For some of these systems, after only a few weeks their ability to clean air begins to drop off by as much as 20% and you will have to go through the same routine all over again.
You want your air purifiers designed with simple maintenance steps for replacing parts through easy access assemblies. You want them to be a simple operation that is done in minutes, not hours. You want high quality parts, including housings, motors, electrical parts and most importantly, a medical grade High Efficiency Particulate Arresting (HEPA) air filter core.
4. Don't Introduce More Pollution
Believe it or not, there are air cleaners sold that boast their ability to clean indoor air while, at the same time, the very process they employ introduces harmful contaminations. There are systems that emit ozone contaminates including units referred to as ionic systems. Don't be fooled! These systems you are told are for your health, illness benefits, asthma relief, and for solving respiratory problems actually expose you to harmful ozone.
Ozone is the last contaminate you need to be exposed to in your home.
5. Room Size Estimates
Measure the size of the room or house where you intend to use your new air purifier. Buy air purifiers that have the capacity to constantly keep clean that air space. Consider the Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR). These measures can be used to compare one system to another. The CADR is a rating of the air volume through your air purifiers and their ability to remove tobacco, smoke and pollen. The more clean air volume passing through your system, the better your system cleans the air in the room. Often air purifier manufacturers will put cheap motors that do not move much air volume or cheap filters that don't remove contaminates. That means that the air in the room may not be exchanged very often and still have pollutants being emitted by the air purifier.
Inexpensive motors and filters will not keep the air you breathe clean.
6. Find The Best Unit, Not The Most Advertised
Buying infomercial type air purifiers that are advertised on TV may not live up to their claims. Saturating airwaves with celebrities and hype cost millions. The money to support these ads comes from the sale of the product. That is a lot of overhead expense!
Look for air purifiers that are well engineered and quality built. Closely compare the infomercial products (that is if you can find product detail) to the many quality products on the market before you buy. When you make the comparisons, you will find the best system for cleaning your indoor air, not a system cleaning out your wallet.
7. Remove Sources of Pollution
Improve air quality by finding and removing the source of the harmful air pollution. Simply by cleaning regularly and removing pollutant sources you will be able to improve indoor air quality. Combining the use of a high quality air purifier with these cleaning practices will reduce or eliminate the air pollution causing symptoms of sneezing, asthma and all the many other problems found in the home.
Clean rugs with dry steam, dust with a wet cloth and remove dust collectors such as books, stuffed animals and knick knacks. If not required, remove rugs, use non-emitting paints, remove chemical cleaners and odor emitting furniture. Keep humidity low, possibly at 50%, to make sure mites, viruses, mold and mildew don't flourish.
