Air Purifiers for Home Allergies

The first step to choosing an air purifier is to pick the right air filtering type. There are four main types to choose from and some air purifiers may have one or all of these features:

1. A HEPA filter
2. an Ionizer
3. an Activated Carbon filter
4. and an Ultraviolet light

Air purifiers with HEPA filters can capture fine particles like:

• dust
• allergens
• pet dander
• mold spores
• Bacteria
• and visible smoke.

Ionizers don’t capture particles, but just knock them out of the air. However, ionizers do help reduce the same types of particles as HEPA filters. An Activated Carbon filter removes odors and gases from the air from things like cooking, chemicals, smoke, pets, and mold.

Ultraviolet light kills airborne bacteria and viruses to make the air sterile. The next step for how to choose an air purifier for the home is to pick the right size. The air purifier you get must be sized properly for the room. If it’s underpowered, then it won’t work very well.

To get the right size air purifier, it must cover the total square footage of the room.

Breezio Air Purifiers Are Designed For Your Room

To be the most effective, you want an air purifier designed for the room in mind. Some air purifiers are only strong enough for small rooms, but the Breezio we have here has a verified coverage area of 470 sq ft. Ideal for medium to large rooms.

Typically air purifiers have a five-stage filtration process. There is a pre-filter that captures larger particles like pet dander, dust, and hair, preventing them from clogging the HEPA filter. These kitties won’t stop playing with the filters. Then there is an allergen filter that further captures any allergens that got through the pre-filter.

How does Breezio air purifier eliminate harmful particles?

At the next stage, the H13 True HEPA filter will eliminate 99.97% of harmful airborne particles as small as 0.1 microns in size. That is quite small. This would include pet dander, gas, smoke, odor, mold, pollen, dust, viruses, or bacteria. Almost nothing goes through the HEPA filter.

For added certainty, there is also an activated carbon filter that removes vapors, gases, or odors. Which is great for cat owners. You can put the air purifier near the litter box and eliminate that odor.

If you need the air purifier to work harder, there is an auto mode that detects the surrounding air quality and adjusts the fan speed automatically.

Lastly, the final stage is a built-in UV-C light and fine dust sensor that adds another layer of efficient and effective air purification by removing viruses and bacteria. UV-C is the only band of UV light that does a very good job of killing pathogens and has a wide range of applications in the medical setting, especially for antibacterial and antiviral disinfection in hospitals.

Are air purifiers effective?

The air purifier is quite silent. Almost a month and look at how much it collected. So are air purifiers worth it? It depends on the person, but if eliminating any of the previously mentioned benefits is something you would like to have in your home then I would consider getting it.

From my experience, I have seen air purifiers greatly improve air quality inside the home during the California wildfire where areas far from the fire were covered in smoke. The skies were orange and caked with smoke.

You could even see smoke coming into your home and every breath felt like ash in your mouth. Having an air purifier really helped maintain air quality inside the home.

Lastly, air purifiers eliminated my pet allergies and to this day I am able to cuddle with my cats.

Best Air Flow Range For Big Rooms

An air purifier’s airflow is the volume of air it can process per unit time. An air purifier with an airflow of 250 CFM, for example, takes 250 cubic feet of air and passes it through all of its filters each minute.

Airflow is important because it largely determines an air purifier’s area of coverage. The higher the airflow, the more powerful the air purifier and the greater its area of coverage.

For example, a 250 CFM air purifier filters all of the air in a 300-square-foot room with eight-foot ceilings six times in one hour. This filtration is absolutely necessary for some applications and makes for a better user experience, even when it’s not neat.

Particle Filter Type

The second major factor we look at to rank air purifiers is particle filter type. Here, we really like air purifiers with a true HEPA filter – a filter that removes 99.97% of particles that travel through it. Many air purifier manufacturers specify HEPA filter efficiency in terms of particle size, stating that HEPA filters remove 99.97% of particles 0.3 microns or larger that travel through them.

This allows certain other manufacturers to market their air purifiers as having a special type of HEPA filter that’s also able to filter particles smaller than 0.3 microns with high efficiency. The truth is that even a standard HEPA filter is also able to filter particles smaller than 0.3 microns with very high efficiency.

Filtration efficiency for a HEPA filter is only given in terms of 0.3 microns because that is the most difficult-sized particle to filter. Particles larger than 0.3 microns are easier to filter, but so are particles smaller than 0.3 microns.

A standard HEPA filter is sufficient and works very well to filter particles of all sizes. HEPA is the gold standard for particle filtration in the industry. It’s the same type of particle filter used in hospitals and the same type of particle filter we recommend here for a residential air purifier.

Gas Filter Type

The next ranking factor is gas filter type in air purifiers. A particle filter, usually a HEPA filter, only removes particles like dust and pollen from the air. An air purifier’s gas filter removes unwanted gases like harmful VOCs and odors from the air.

The industry’s standard for gas filtration is an activated carbon filter. There are two types of carbon filters: those that are composed of carbon pellets and those that are composed of a thin fibrous material that’s only coated with carbon.

Pellet-based filters generally provide more surface area for the absorption of unwanted gases, so they filter these gases better and last longer. If an air purifier has this type of carbon filter, it’s a strong positive for that particular model.

Fibrous filters generally provide much less surface area for the adsorption of unwanted gases, so they don’t filter them as well and don’t last as long. If an air purifier has this type of carbon filter, we generally consider it to be a negative for that particular model.

Pre-Filter Type

Another important ranking factor is pre-filter type. Most air purifiers have some type of pre-filter, a filter that’s positioned in front of its HEPA filter that catches larger particles. Without a pre-filter, HEPA filters would saturate with larger particles very quickly and need to be replaced much more frequently. A good quality pre-filter extends the life of the HEPA filter and greatly reduces long-term filter costs.

The best quality pre-filters are separate filters made of high-quality mesh or fabric. They filter well and are easy to clean. Many air purifiers use a lower quality pre-filter that’s attached to a combination filter, usually stretched right over the unit’s HEPA filter. Because of its proximity to the HEPA filter, vacuuming this type of free filter can damage the HEPA filter.

You could also wipe or dust off this type of filter, but doing so won’t clean it as well and can generate a lot of airborne dust. Either way, this type of pre-filter encourages more frequent HEPA filter replacement, which increases the long-term cost of ownership.

HEPA Filter Replacement

A separate high-quality pre-filter makes for less frequent HEPA filter replacement and lower long-term filter costs. Placing the air purifier’s carbon filter in front of its HEPA filter provides an extra line of defense against large particles.

This further maximizes the life of the air purifier’s most expensive and important filter – its HEPA filter. You don’t get the same benefit when placing the carbon filter after the HEPA filter. Interestingly, most air purifiers with a separate high-quality pre-filter also have their carbon filter positioned in front of their HEPA filter.

This indicates that maximizing filter life was a priority in the overall design of these models. Most air purifiers that have a low-quality pre-filter tend to also have their carbon filter positioned after their HEPA filter. This indicates that maximizing filter life was not a priority in the overall design of these models.

Where to place an air purifier in a room?

Which room is preferred for an air purifier? Usually, people place an air purifier at the source of pollution. But many people like to put the air purifier in the living room because, after all, that is the room that has the TV, and that means that people are staying in that room longer.

The kitchen is also a good air purifier location because many bad smells are coming from the kitchen—burnt food, onions, rotten cheese, and whatnot. The bedroom is also an excellent option for placing an air purifier because we spend at least eight hours of sleep, and if the air quality in that room gets better, maybe we will sleep less.

When you decide in which room to place an air purifier, you will also need to determine where to put it precisely. Place the air purifier beside the source of the odor to combat odor. It is best to do it at its source; that way, the odor will not spread and will be contained on the spot.

Keep coverage area in mind

Don’t place a weak air purifier in a large room and vice versa. This just doesn’t work. Weak air purifiers in large rooms will not filter the air often, and the pollution will stay in the room. Large air purifiers in a small room can filter already-filtered air and, in that way, waste your money.

Avoid corners and tight spaces

Corners and tight spaces with lots of furniture are not good because an air purifier needs open space to pull all that dirty air, filter it, and release the fresh one. If it can’t pull dirty air, dirty air will stay in the room.

Put it near the doorway

Placing an air purifier at the doorway is a nice trick to catch all the pollution at the doorway. No pollution will enter your home if you have such a security guard at the door.

Keep away from AC devices: An air purifier may not play along with other electronic devices and may send interference to them, and vice versa. If you witness that, then you should place it in a different spot away from other devices in the room.

Now you are ready to place your first air purifier in a perfect position to combat all that pollution freely flowing in the room. If you follow the above-mentioned advice, you are ready to eliminate that nasty pollution.