Trane CleanEffects furnace filter

[CurlyDave]

That being said, people pay good money for "ionic air cleaners" that are a total waste of money and accomplish nothing, so...if you spend the big bucks on the Trane air cleaner, you're doing more for your air than wasting it on an "ionic" air cleaner.

Sig:

I used to think the same thing about the ionic air cleaners.

Then one day at work, I went into an area which had not been designed or built as a clean room, but which had been pressed into service for that purpose. The guy running the area had put several of the ionic air cleaners from Sharper Image in there and was really impressed with how well they worked.

He knew what he was talking about. We work in the optics for space field, and have really, really good ways to measure dust accumulation. Prices for some of our stuff start in the $10 Million range, and go up to numbers that exceed the annual budget of most countries in the UN.

 

[Sigarms]

Dave

The four meathods that I somewhat familiar with as far as determining air filter efficiency.

1. Dust spot
2. Arrestance
3. MERV
4. DOP
5. ISO8573 (learning)

I'd be very curious as to how your co-worker determined the ionic air filter worked other then saying "boy, it feels a lot better in here now!" (I should state that an ionic filter will work, the question is how effective).

The old saying "statistics can be made to say anything you want them to say" never held as much truth then when you talk about ratings on air filtration products. You also need to know who is conducting the testing, who is paying for it, and best of all, how that information is "interpreted" and then "marketed" to the buying public.

Thats not to say ionic air cleaners do not work, only that the money could be spent on more efficient and cost effective alternatives for what you're actually buying and wanting that product to accomplish.

 

[dmccarty]

Is there such a thing as an air cleaner that is NOT connected to the HVAC system that works? I'm thinking of something like a dehumidifier sized dohickey. We only use the HVAC for AC. The wood stove heats the house and the HVAC is only used a couple of times a year for heating.

The thing that grabbed my attention about the Ionic cleaners is no noise. Our HVAC system is really quiet. BUT, I still hear it. I don't want to hear it.

Is there a good filter that is quiet, filters dust, cheap to operate and cheap to buy?

Later,
Dan

 

[CurlyDave]

I'd be very curious as to how your co-worker determined the ionic air filter worked other then saying "boy, it feels a lot better in here now!" (I should state that an ionic filter will work, the question is how effective).

We place very clean, highly polished silicon wafers in several places around the room & expose them for about a week. We then put them in dust-tight containers, bring them back to a central area and count the dust particles per square centimeter on them with a microscope. When we pick them up, we put a new one down. There is a specified procedure for doing this, I think it is an ASTM test. It is much more sophisticated than just counting particles, both size and shape also count. A big particle counts more against you than a small one, and a long skinny one is worse than a round, almost spherical one.

There is a central service organization that does this -- we just get the report once a week and read it.

 

[CurlyDave]

Is there a good filter that is quiet, filters dust, cheap to operate and cheap to buy?

I have used HEPA filters (a type of filter, not a brand) in my house with good results.

They are about 18" diameter by 18" high. They are quiet but not completely silent.

They are expensive, I paid about $150 each at Costco. The trick is to use enough of them, you need one for about each 8,000 cubic feet of volume.

A while before I met my wife, I had a girlfriend who was allergic to my dog. I didn't want to have to get a new girlfriend, so we tried the filters. About 20 minutes after we turned them on her wheezing, sneezing and runny nose stopped and never came back.

If you have a wood stove, you need a HEPA filter with pre-filters to take out most of the dust. The expensive HEPA filter elements will load up from the ash without a good pre-filter.

They are quiet enough that I learned to live with one in the bedroom, but when we broke up I got rid of it.

 

[Sigarms]

Dave, what type of ventilation does the room in question have? Size of room?

I'd be curious as to the count on the dust particles per sq. centimeter and how those numbers are affected by the number of ionic air cleaners in the room, which leads me to my next question, how did you guys come up with seven air cleaners for the room?

The next question I would wonder is how much were those ionic air cleaners?

I could be off, but I'd figure about $300 each. Several of them and your over two grand, but of course no labor and other instalation costs.

I'd also be curious as to how the purchase order request was "proposed" for seven ionic air cleaners

 

[BobRip]

I'd be very curious as to how your co-worker determined the ionic air filter worked other then saying "boy, it feels a lot better in here now!" (I should state that an ionic filter will work, the question is how effective).

We place very clean, highly polished silicon wafers in several places around the room & expose them for about a week. We then put them in dust-tight containers, bring them back to a central area and count the dust particles per square centimeter on them with a microscope. When we pick them up, we put a new one down. There is a specified procedure for doing this, I think it is an ASTM test. It is much more sophisticated than just counting particles, both size and shape also count. A big particle counts more against you than a small one, and a long skinny one is worse than a round, almost spherical one.

There is a central service organization that does this -- we just get the report once a week and read it.

OK, this works in a clean room where the influx of particles is very limited. In a house this is not so. It is my suspicion that these cleaners do remove very small particles, but they don't have enough air flow to substantially reduce the total particle count in a normal house or room. When I see the TV advertisement they have the filter in a very small plastic bag and it takes many seconds to remove the smoke. I am not an expert, but I did have one of these for a couple of years and the main affect was that when you ran it on high your could feel a burning in the back of your throat. There was also a warning on it for asmatics. The new units have an ozone filter, and my guess is they got complaints about this and are now removing the self generated ozone. Maybe some else has more information on this, but the air flow is very low from these units, that's why they are so quiet.
Just read your post on the girl friend allergy. That's a pretty good real world test, so maybe I am wrong.

 

[CurlyDave]

Dave, what type of ventilation does the room in question have? Size of room?

I'd be curious as to the count on the dust particles per sq. centimeter and how those numbers are affected by the number of ionic air cleaners in the room, which leads me to my next question, how did you guys come up with seven air cleaners for the room?

The next question I would wonder is how much were those ionic air cleaners?

I could be off, but I'd figure about $300 each. Several of them and your over two grand, but of course no labor and other instalation costs.

I'd also be curious as to how the purchase order request was "proposed" for seven ionic air cleaners

The room is ~20' x 40', forced air ventillation. I have no idea on the existing filtration, but I would guess a little better than home furnace filters. It is an interior space, with no outside window.

I have no idea on the exact count of dust particles per sq. cm. we actually measured, but the number was probably horrifyingly high to most people. The way air cleanliness is specified is in particles per cubic meter in the air. It is monitored with the silicon wafers and there is a correlation between exposure time, particle count, and air cleanliness.

A nice clean office environment, no manufacturing, say a doctor or lawyer's office is going to be about 300,000 particles/cubic meter. Based on experience with other "clean" areas, the ionic air cleaners probably took this room from about 300,000 to 100,000 particles/cubic meter.

There weren't "seven", there were "several" which I think was 4.

I have no idea of cost, but I think $300 each is in the right range.

I used to think these things were a complete waste of money, but based on these results, I now believe that one could significantly clean the air in a 10' x 20' room, maybe a bit larger. This is not economically viable for an entire house, but might work out for one room. I think the HEPA filters I mentioned are a lot better choice for a whole house (do a Google search on HEPA filters). They are about $200, don't make ozone, and have a fan to force air circulation. They are sold for allergy control.

As far as how they were bought, I didn't personally buy them, but the way they got bought was that someone wrote up a request for them and it got processed. Sure, it was unusual, but it worked and it was a whole lot cheaper & faster than upgrading the ventillation system in the room.

Until I retire, I have a job which could be called a "technological Disneyland". Look at my profile. When I say "Rocket Scientist" I mean exactly that. I work at a big aerospace company, in the research & development division. Among other things, we build one-of-a-kind satellites. Satellites are expensive, and when you add one-of-a-kind, the cost goes up even more. As of a few years ago, our division had 700 people, 500 with Ph.D. degrees, 150 with Masters degrees, and about 50 in building maintenance, machine shops, procurement, etc. With that kind of work force, there are hundreds of hare-brained ideas every week, all of which involve spending money on something.

In the past 10-15 years the company has started to realize that it is a lot more cost effective to just buy small stuff like this, than to go through endless rounds of reviews, justifications and signatures, with a manager's loaded labor rate of $250/hour, and then end up buying it anyway. Plus the guys who need it used to wind up sucking their thumbs for weeks or months waiting for the stuff to come in, probably at close to that same loaded labor rate. (Loaded labor rate means their pay scale plus overhead, about 3 times their actual salary, but what we bill the government for their time.)

The best analogy I can think of is: you don't buy a racehorse and then count the oats you feed him.

We have a procurement lady with a Visa card with a very high limit. Any purchase request under $25,000, she just calls it in and it is delivered the next day.

 

[Sigarms]

Dave, on last question, and I assure you I'm not trying to beat a dead horse, but curious.

On the particles removed per the ionic air cleaners, do you know what size of particles your test went to.

ASHRAE standards are usually .3 to 10 mircons.

That's were some of the statistics comes into "play". A simple analogy would be a tennis net. You could try to hit 100 tennis balls through the net, and I'd guess not one would go through. You could say that the tennis net was 100% effective on stopping materials passing through it.

I would also wonder how effective a portable air cleaner unit would be in a room that has ventilation per an HVAC system. Figuring on three air exchanges per hour per the system, and if that system didn't have some sort of air cleaner installed other than a poly or fiberglass filter in the air handler or furnace.

That said, if a person has allergies (sp?) and you put a portable unit in the room, and if the person who has the allergies (sp?) feels better after the unit is running, bottom line is I guess the unit works.

 

[Dickey]

I just had a Trane cleaner installed with a Trane five ton air conditioner. The cleaner was 840 Dollars and the air conditioner with out the inside unit was three thousand. They didn't say anything about running the air conditioner all the time but the filter runs all the time