Air Purifier Vs Furnace Filter

An air purifier cleans the air in one room or living area while an air filter works to clean the air as it circulates in your home.

Air purifier vs furnace filter. Replacement filter based whole house air purifiers. Air purifiers she cautioned are not a replacement for what she calls proximal source interventions for instance a hepa air cleaner can reduce particulate matter in the home of a smoker and. The simplest 1 filters for your furnace prevent hair and larger dust particles from getting into your furnace and reducing its efficiency. Human hair has a diameter of 100 microns.

There s nothing wrong with these if you don t suffer from any allergic symptoms. Purify the air by removing dangerous fumes and finer particles that an hvac filter doesn t touch. An air purifier is capable of targeting smaller particles unlike hvac air filters up to 99 97 of allergens dust mold and other particles like smoke and odors can be removed by an air purifier. While an air filter is built in to your hvac system an air purifier is a stand alone appliance designed to do one job.

After a fifth round of testing encompassing 32 different air purifiers and more than 400 hours of lab and real world trials the coway ap 1512hh mighty remains our pick as the best air purifier. A clean air filter can help to stabilize your energy bills but an air purifier might increase the costs because they run in addition to your ac system. These are sold as either a media filter or a more expensive electronic air cleaner to be installed into your hvac unit in lieu of the media filter. While our air quality experts recommend using an hvac air filter they agree that an hvac air filter alone provides inadequate filtration.

We feel the manufacturers concerns are a bit overcautious in part because a recent innovation in air filters permits high merv ratings 11 to 13 with low pressure drop. In essence replacement filter based whole house air purifiers are simply furnace filters for your hvac unit. Air purifiers are often conflated with air filters but they differ slightly said john mckeon md and ceo of allergy standards. To test air purifiers we inject smoke and dust particles into a sealed chamber and measure how well each model removes particles between 0 1 and 1 micron.

Learn about our carrier air purifiers air filters.