For Better Air Quality in Your Home, Consider an Air-Cleaning System

&Don’t make the mistake of assuming the standard air filter installed in your forced-air cooling or heating system will take care of all the air-quality concerns in your home. This is especially the case if you have family members – or yourself – who are vulnerable to allergies and respiratory issues, or your home has particular air-quality challenges, such as living near a dirt road or an industrial plant. This applies as well if you’re particularly concerned about cononavirus spread, a concern that, unfortunately, isn’t be at all unusual in this day and age.

Unless the air filter in your air conditioner or furnace has elaborate filtration media working to sift out even the smallest airborne particulates, a significant percentage of these contaminants are likely blowing through the filter and into your indoor air.

A standard air filter is mainly intended to protect sensitive parts of your cooling and heating equipment from dust and dirt, rather than comprehensively cleanse indoor air. If the latter is a high priority for your household, you should consider a whole-house air cleaning or purifying system.

How a Standard Air Filter Works

A regular flat-panel air filter, the sort that you can buy at any home improvement store, hardware store or super market, is typically slid into a compartment at the point where the home’s duct system connects with the furnace or air handler for the heat pump or AC. As the system’s blower pushes air through the system, the filter removes a certain percentage of airborne particulates, preventing them from landing on sensitive components of the equipment. Higher-efficiency air filters are available, which remove ever-smaller particulates from the air. At a certain point, however, the dense filtration media will begin impeding the flow of air through the system. This hampers both energy efficiency and performance, while wasting energy and increasing the chance of equipment breakdowns in the future.

In homes where ultra-clean air isn’t a special need, a basic or mid-efficiency air filter for your forced-air HVAC system should be sufficient. It will remove most particulates from the air without restricting airflow, and will keep components from becoming dirty and as a result less effective.

Why Not Consider an Air-Cleaning System?

While retrofitting your existing forced-air HVAC system might be possible in order to accommodate a high-efficiency air filter, a more effective (and likely cheaper) option might be a dedicated whole-house air-cleaning system.

A wide range of technological strategies are available to clean indoor air, and some of the best indoor air-cleaning systems employ a combination of these technologies. These include but are not limited to HEPA filtration, ultraviolet light radiation and ionizing purification. Some of these systems are incredibly efficient, removing or neutralizing up to 99.9 percent of the particulates suspended in indoor air. Some of these systems are attached directly to your forced-air cooling and heating equipment, treating all the air that moves through the system. However, some air cleaners – generally called air purifiers – are designed to work independently of your furnace, air conditioner or heat pump, cleansing the air in an individual room or area of your house.

Don’t Forget Ventilation and Source Control

It’s important to not make the mistake of assuming that an air-cleaning system – whether whole house or stand-alone – will take care of all of your indoor air quality issues. Air cleaning should work in tandem with proper ventilation and responsible source control. For example, installing effective exhaust fans in the kitchen and bathrooms will help address specific air quality issues in those areas. Reducing the use of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in your home – or at least properly storing these paints, solvents, cleaning compounds, etc. – will make you doubly sure that your home’s indoor air stays as clean as possible.

Talk to a Professional

Nobody is saying that this decision – relying on air filtration or adding an air-cleaning system – is easy. Discuss your options and concerns with a technician from your trusted HVAC company. This way you’ll be as secure as possible in whatever decision you end up making.