Air Purifier for Dust

[brookline]

Hi everybody,
I'm in the market for a portable air purifier that will remove pet hair, dust, & dust mites. I'm seeking something that is quiet, mechanically reliable, will clear the air in a 200 square foot room, & costs less than $200. Can anyone recommend a model? (I checked Consumer Reports & prices were beyond my ERE budget.)

[vexed87]

If you really need it, it's probably worth spending the money on. But to keep to your budget, have you tried looking for a good used unit? Try ebay/craigslist?

My dad swears By his dyson air filter thingy, and they have been out long enough to pick up used.

[brookline]

Hi,
Thanks for the recommendations regarding buying used & seeking a Dyson. I'm wondering if an air purifier might not be a good candidate for purchasing used. Might the filters break down or otherwise become ineffective over time? Any thoughts?

[Riggerjack]

A friend had this problem. i took a bathroom .8 sone bathroom fan from home depot, fitted it with a washable filter I bought online, wired a cord to it, and taped it together. It looked like hell, but works great, is quiet, and dumps a ridiculous amount of dust weekly in his driveway, when he washes the filter. If I remember right, I had about $125 into it.

HEPA filters can be expensive to replace, and need replacement often in dusty environs. Ozone has its own issues, google to your contentment.

Good luck.

[Sclass]

A friend had this problem. i took a bathroom .8 sone bathroom fan from home depot, fitted it with a washable filter I bought online, wired a cord to it, and taped it together. It looked like hell, but works great, is quiet, and dumps a ridiculous amount of dust weekly in his driveway, when he washes the filter. If I remember right, I had about $125 into it.

HEPA filters can be expensive to replace, and need replacement often in dusty environs. Ozone has its own issues, google to your contentment.

Good luck.

This sounds like a great idea. I built a clean room for precision assembly and we bought these big air handlers with HEPA filters. ours used positive pressure from outside some workcells and displaced dirty air with hepa filtered air. It was basically an expensive version of this. Just run the fan on low as often as you can.

Consumer grade air filter appliances look like toys and cost too much.

[brookline]

A friend had this problem. i took a bathroom .8 sone bathroom fan from home depot, fitted it with a washable filter I bought online, wired a cord to it, and taped it together. It looked like hell, but works great, is quiet, and dumps a ridiculous amount of dust weekly in his driveway, when he washes the filter. If I remember right, I had about $125 into it.

HEPA filters can be expensive to replace, and need replacement often in dusty environs. Ozone has its own issues, google to your contentment.

Good luck.

Hi Riggerjack,
Wow, that is an inventive solution. Our bedroom has a bathroom next to it with a ceiling fan. Could such a system as you describe be rigged to it?

[Riggerjack]

Yes. Maybe. Your bath fan should be venting outside, so your filtered air goes outside. For this to work, you would reroute your bath fan to circulate, or, skip the filter, and just run the fan on the assumption that outside air is cleaner. Or, run the fan, open a window on the other side of the house, and put the filter there.

Having a bath fan/filter running without an opening filters the indoor air. If you use a mounted fan, vented outside, you want to filter where the air comes in. Often, this is another vented opening, like a kitchen vent.

Google washable air filters. They are metallic, and work on static, generated on the air moving through them.

Then, jury rig one over the input, as your setup and DIY skills allow. Remember that you will be cleaning the filter often. My friend does it once a week, all year long.

[SavingWithBabies]

I like the DIY idea.

I've got three of these:

Winix WAC5500 True HEPA Air Cleaner with PlasmaWave Technology

They go on sale every once in a while (I paid $130, right now they are $170, CamelCamelCamel is good for looking at pricing history on Amazon). The filter is washable and I've done that once so far on our three and it was easy to do. One seems to cover a small to medium-sized room and they do catch a lot of dust. They are quiet when on low but have a feature to automatically ramp up the fan when it detects bad air. That feature does seem to actually work.

[jacob]

http://www.grizzly.com/products/g0738 ... this one is on sale now for $100(*)

I have no experience with it but it looks serious. Maybe too serious for the problem at hand.

(*) It's 35lbs, so shipping will add some $$.

Replacement filters here: http://www.homedepot.com/p/WEN-5-Micron ... /205711959