As winter approaches the Fort Wayne area, you might be thinking about your home’s indoor air quality. During colder months, we tend to stay inside our homes more, so taking charge of the air you breathe regularly is a great idea to keep your family healthy.
If you’ve been shopping for indoor air quality products, you’ve probably noticed that there are a couple of different whole house filtration systems available. But how do they work and which is right for you? “Doc” Dancer Heating and Air explains some of these common HVAC system add-ons and how they can improve indoor air quality in your home.
Why It’s Worth Having a Whole House Air Filtration System Installed
You may have seen portable air systems that promise better indoor air quality. And while these single-room products work, they often require a lot of maintenance and don’t have a long-lasting working life. You may need to change filters on a regular basis or add or drain water tanks. While it may seem like a modest inconvenience, when you have a whole-house air filtration system installed, maintenance is very seldom and is usually taken care of by your HVAC technician during your annual maintenance appointment.
Small air filtration systems usually can only treat a set area. If you have air quality issues that are plaguing your entire home, a system designed to improve the air quality in your whole house will be much more effective.
Doesn’t My HVAC System Already Have an Air Filter?
If you have a furnace or an air handler in your home, you probably are familiar with the air filters that you need to change on a regular basis. These filters are designed to keep your furnace clean from contaminants, dust, and pet dander. While you can buy bigger and more powerful filters that are designed to filter out more particles, the biggest benefactor of these filters is your HVAC system, not the members of the house.
Air filters will help improve your indoor air quality as well if you change them on a regular basis and look for ones with a high minimum efficiency reporting value or MERV rating. MERV ratings range between 1-16, and the higher the rating, the better the filtration.
Air Cleaners Vs Air Purifiers
If you’re looking for a way to keep the air in your home clean and help stop the spread of germs, you might be interested in an air filtration system. But which one is right for you? “Doc” Dancer offers air cleaners and air purifiers. These are whole-house air filtration systems that are sometimes used interchangeably, but there are key differences between them. Let us explain the difference between the most common systems so you can figure out which one meets your needs best.
Air Cleaners
An air cleaner is like your furnace filter on steroids. It’s larger, stronger, and can catch more particles and contaminants than regular air filters can. Air cleaners can filter the air of more finer things like pollen, pet dander, mold spores, dust mites, and other airborne bacteria and particles larger than .35 microns.
Air cleaners are integrated into your home’s heating and cooling system, and as air flows through the system, it passes through the air cleaner. The contaminated air is filtered so the air you breathe is much cleaner.
Air Purifiers
An air purifier is installed in the same place as an air cleaner, but instead of filtering the air, it sanitizes it. There are a variety of air purifiers on the market, but “Doc” Dancer offers UV light air purifiers. UV light is able to remove numerous chemical and biological contaminants from the air like viruses, mold, smoke, allergens, bacteria, and more. Whole house air purifiers can help prevent viruses from spreading around your home and may make your home cleaner too.
Talk to “Doc” Dancer About the Benefits of Air Filtration Systems
Both whole-house air purifiers and air cleaners offer great benefits. Both can increase the performance of your HVAC system, both can improve your indoor air quality, and both can help control dust and bacteria from spreading around your home. A whole-house air purifier might make more sense if you want to stop the spread of viruses around your home, but an air cleaner might be better if you’re looking for a way to cut down on dust in your home.
Make an appointment with “Doc” Dancer today for an indoor air quality assessment, and talk to one of our experienced technicians to learn which system they would recommend for you.