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Living very close to busy highways is known to generate poor air quality. I recommend anyone in those locations buy an air purifier for their kids' rooms. I bo
by Aurornis 2mo ago
Living very close to busy highways is known to generate poor air quality. I recommend anyone in those locations buy an air purifier for their kids' rooms.
I bought a couple reasonably priced HEPA purifiers and I change the filters on schedule. Replacement HEPA filters are very cheap.
Also watch out for things that we do indoors that can generate bad air quality. I had a friend who bought a VOC meter and noticed very high readings in his kid's room. He traced the source to his chemical and paint cabinet nearby, which he never considered because he couldn't smell anything. Throwing out a lot of the old containers dropped the measurements to the unmeasurable range.
- energy123 2mo agoIt's a good start, but for VOCs and gases you'll need activated carbon. Those 2-in-1 filters do exist but cost more. And many are scams because they don't have enough volume of activated carbon.
- Sha1rholder 2mo agoWhy would they cut corners? Activated carbon isn’t expensive.
- karlgkk 2mo agoBut it does cost money and so… corners are cut
- Retric 2mo agoBecause it’s not obvious to most customers that a corner’s been cut. Same reason most new construction in the US sucks. You can safely put a washer and dryer on the upper floor of a house if you add a proper floor drain, but you’re unlikely to see anyone add a floor drain in new construction because buyers aren’t looking for it. Now multiply that by everything a buyer isn’t looking for and you’re talking real money.
- mschuster91 2mo ago> You can safely put a washer and dryer on the upper floor of a house if you add a proper floor drain European here, we've always been placing washer/dryer stacks in our bathrooms without needing floor drains. We have machines with a system called Aquastop [1] that stop the water flow if the machine detects a leak inside the system. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquastop https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquastop
- Retric 2mo agoThere’s a wide range of such designs due to the various different failure modes from false positives to the kinds of leaks resulting in 10’s of thousands in damages they are supposed to prevent.
- Symbiote 2mo agoIn Denmark and I think Sweden it's a requirement that a washing machine is in a room with a floor drain. Therefore the washing machine is usually in the bathroom, and the shower drain serves both purposes.
- throwway120385 2mo agoWhat brand of washer do you use so I can studiously avoid it?
- Retric 2mo agoIf the seal between the washing machine and the water supply fails it doesn’t matter which brand you’re using. They have improved over time, but you need to have a drain for the washing machine anyway so the cost is quite low vs the rather extreme damage a leak can cause.
- Aurornis 2mo agoYou simply cannot put enough activated carbon in a little foam thing that goes in front of a filter to do anything useful. The real activated carbon filters have 10s of pounds of carbon. The little black foam thing that comes with those 2-in-1 carbon filters is useless.
- gambiting 2mo agoAnd manufacturers do a sneaky swap too, my Coway 150 which is a great air filter by the way, came with a nice thick grid of hexagonal cells each filled with carbon granules - that insert alone weighs like half a kg. I ordered official filter and carbon filter replacements off their website ....got a thin carbon "foam" that weighs maybe 50g instead.
- ericd 2mo agoIf anyone wants to get serious about VOC filtering, these things have 7 pounds of carbon in them, they’re made for filtering the air of weed grow ops: https://terra-bloom.com/collections/carbon-filters https://terra-bloom.com/collections/carbon-filters
- gib444 2mo agoThe clue is in your name
- victorbjorklund 2mo agoYou have companies choosing the component that cost 10 cents instead of 15 cents even if the 10 cents component will break 10 times faster than the more expensive one.
- Aurornis 2mo agoGetting rid of the VOC source, if possible, is much easier than trying to filter it. > Those 2-in-1 filters do exist but cost more. And many are scams because they don't have enough volume of activated carbon. Any filter with a little bit of carbon added is going to be useless after a few days, or maybe even hours. The only VOC filters that work have multiple pounds of carbon, with the good filters having upwards of 10-20 pounds. It also has to be replaced regularly.
- energy123 2mo agoI was referring to the gases from the cars on the highway more than easily removed indoor sources.
- Aurornis 2mo agoThe pollution from highways is primarily particulate matter: Rubber from tires wearing down, brake pad dust, particles disturbed by fast vehicles and kicked into the air.
- LegitShady 2mo agoMy common winix air purifier has a replaceable carbon filter.
- Aurornis 2mo agoUnless it has multiple pounds of carbon, it’s not doing much. These are for show.
- solatic 2mo agoAgreed, just buy air purifiers with HEPA filters and change them regularly. The main expense is buying one for every room, but it's one of those expenses you wish you had made sooner. DHH is also a fan (pun not intended?): https://world.hey.com/dhh/air-purifiers-are-a-simple-answer-to-allergies-3ea70b03 https://world.hey.com/dhh/air-purifiers-are-a-simple-answer-...
- giantg2 2mo agoMight be better to upgrade your air handler if you're putting HEPA in every room.
- tomcam 2mo agoAlso he had the kid switch to smoking filtereds
- patrickk 2mo agoIf you’re so inclined, you can build your own air purifier with laser cut panels or 3d printed panels and use a cheap ikea air filter and standard PC fans. All the parts are readily available, and user repairable. If you pair if with an Apollo AIR-1 you can have home assistant ramp up and down the fans with a PC fan controller based on live readings of PM2.5 in your home. I did this with the help of Claude code. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6826527 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6826527 https://makerworld.com/en/models/2470181-nukit-tempest-euro-frame-air-purifier-starkvind#profileId-2711914 https://makerworld.com/en/models/2470181-nukit-tempest-euro-...
- swiftcoder 2mo agoI really wish the DIY folks would measure the airflow and sound levels on this sort of thing. CADR and decibels are going to vary wildly with fan choice
- picture 2mo agoI came across this site which has pretty comprehensive data about PQ curves (the chart for determining CADR given filter impedance) at different noise and power levels: https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/204/ https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/204/ (many other fans tested as well but I've been liking the value of P14 Pro PST) However they look somewhat commercial and I'm not sure the funding/incentives so definitely corroborate with other sources.
- patrickk 2mo agoDIY folks are not a commercial outfit with access to testing equipment. Having said that, there are reviews of some DIY models reviewing CADR[1], and it's bizarre to complain about testing decibles since Arctic P14 fans, the most commonly recommended fans, are a thouroughly tested product. Running them at around 25% based on lower PM2.5 readings is almost inaudible from experience. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjGJN57DgA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjGJN57DgA8
- agos 2mo agoif you're going to IKEA for the filters you might as well buy the whole purifier. it's cheap and it works well
- mrob 2mo agoHEPA filters are counterproductive in standard air purifiers. Air purifiers pump their cleaned air directly into the dirty air of the room. It doesn't matter if that cleaned air is extremely clean, because it's immediately mixed with dirty air. What actually matters is how much clean air you produce: the "clean air delivery rate" (CADR). The more effective the filter the more it restricts airflow. If a filter is only 99% effective instead of 99.99% but allows double the airflow, it provides nearly double the CADR. To benefit from HEPA you need a clean side and dirty side, like in a clean-room setup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_air_delivery_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_air_delivery_rate
- lokar 2mo agoMy basic HEPA filter is keeping my (large) house at <= 1 ug/m^3 vs 17 outside for PM2.5
- adrianN 2mo agoAny air purifier should be able to cycle the air in a normal room often enough that it should be quite clean in a short time.
- red-iron-pine 2mo agoaye, like as long as you're not leaving the kids window open all night, or multiple other windows open nearby, it oughta fix itself soon enough
- tallanvor 2mo agoIf the purifier can filter the air more quickly than air leaves the room it'll still reduce the amount of pollutants in the air. Most people aren't going to create a "clean side" and "dirty side" setup for filtering the air in a room.
- rcxdude 2mo agoI think that is what they're saying: the point is that if you're doing this, you don't want to optimize for the cleanest air leaving the filter, but more for throughput.
- vincnetas 2mo agowhat a nice externality example "I recommend anyone in those locations buy an air purifier for their kids' rooms" I drive the car, you buy the purifier.
- Aurornis 2mo agoWhat’s your suggestion? Just sit there and be angry that transportation exists? You don’t think the parent commenter is also using transportation? The pollution from transport also occurs with trains, buses, and any other vehicle that has wheels, brakes, or moves fast enough to stir up the air and kick particulates into the air. People do what they can and control what’s within their reach.
- vincnetas 2mo agoSo to give you other example. You live and nearby opens a chemical plant and starts smelling, so you just buy gas mask and hazmat suit or start complaining? And yes other means of transport also does pollute, but amount is is critical here. You need much less public transport than you need individual cars. I perfectly understand that there is no quick solution (only quick patch with air purifier) so thats why we should not normalise this and remember to complain (after buying air purifier)
- kakacik 2mo agoI drive the car, you buy/rent cheap place because its shitty polluted noisy place, so compensate that with air purifier. There is no free lunch in healthy society, there are good reasons for rent for same amount of m2 do wildly differ across same city and its not just sunset views or distance to work
- II2II 2mo agoI got tired of that sort of argument when I realized that a great many of the people who argued that they have the right to tear down the side streets of walkable downtown neighbourhoods lived in unwalkable suburban neighbourhoods. Those unwalkable neighbourhoods were usually designed with a single access road to ensure there was no through traffic, so they would never have to deal with that problem. Then those same people had the audacity to ask everyone to pay for additional access roads when they realized that a single access road was a disaster when their neighbourhood needed emergency services and had to be evacuated (because it was burning to the ground). Of course, those additional access roads had to be designed to discourage through traffic. Am I bitter about that? Yes. There is nothing wrong with wanting the best for you. There is something dearly wrong with using what's best for you to make life worse for others.