Bill Pentz air cleaner

[Mark Daily]

That's only Merv 14. Not really even close to true HEPA.

The ones I linked to are Merv 16, and that's the best price I can find anywhere, for the 12" x 24" size.

You can also get Merv 16 bag filters, but with just a course pre-filter in front, they might clogged too fast.

Caramba dude! You building a workshop or a surgical suite? LOL! Just kidding really.
Think I’d spend that money on a meter first..hint-hint😬

[Mark Daily]

Unfortunately there wasn’t enough interest to put a group buy together so I bought my own Dylos DC1100 pro and started some testing inside my house. Built in 2000, frame & stucco, 2 AC/heat pumps- one for each side of the house.

I set up in the living room where we watch TV and hang out. I only recorded values for small particles as that is what concerns me. Counts started in the area of 150 during afternoon hours and climbed as high as 750 between midnight and 8:00 AM when we were asleep.

The next day at 1:00 PM I turned both A/C fans on to run continuously to circulate the air. The count dropped from 380 to 65 after about an hour and stayed in that area. Turned the A/C fans off overnight and the count ranged from 60 to 90.

The following morning I installed a Filtrete 1900 MPR filter in each air return. Set both A/C fans to run and the reading dropped to “5” after about 20 minutes! It remained under 10 all day. Overnight it ranged from 28 to 92 with no fans running.

Looks like the house is sealed fairly well and the counts drop when the A/C is running. For several years I have been using washable electrostatic filters which apparently worked pretty well. Clearly the Filtrete 1900 MPR filters work very well- for now, I’m done inside the house.

On to the workshop- stay tuned for those numbers!

[Jamie Buxton]

I'd be curious what the particulate levels are outside of the house. That is, does your house help you or hurt you?

[Mark Daily]

I'd be curious what the particulate levels are outside of the house. That is, does your house help you or hurt you?

Jamie- I just put it outside and after about 5 minutes it was reading 475/188. I’ll leave it out there today to get some more readings.

[Mark Daily]

Jamie- I just put it outside and after about 5 minutes it was reading 475/188. I’ll leave it out there today to get some more readings.

Put it outside for 10 hours today and the readings ranged from 161/33 to 463/81. The average was 252/50.

[Jim Dwight]

The current Wood magazine includes tests of airfilters including a simple box fan with a high MERV filter on it. The box fan did surprisingly well. I think it was their budget pick. It outperformed several of the commercial systems.

[Mark Daily]

Seems you can do pretty well just by forcing air through a good filter- doesn’t need to be fancy.

[Mark Daily]

Today we made microwave popcorn which is guaranteed to smell up the entire house. But this time I replaced the A/C filters with Filtrete 1200 MPR odor reduction filters which use activated charcoal.

I turned on the A/C fans before cooking the popcorn to circulate the air. Afterwards, we could barely smell just a hint of popcorn anywhere in the house. I went outside for a short time and when I came back inside I couldn’t smell any popcorn.

Before, I was skeptical about these filters but not any more. The Dylos does however show they don’t filter quite as well as the 1900 MPR filters I put in recently. The 1200’s got the small particle count down to around 100 at best while the 1900’s will bring it down to 5-10 easily.