If you’re looking to improve your home’s indoor air quality in Panama City, FL, you’ve come to the right people. We offer excellent IAQ services to help local homeowners enjoy fresher and healthier air.
When you consider that the air inside homes is often 4-5 times worse than the air outdoors, even small IAQ improvements can make a significant difference in your quality of life and general health.
But where do you start with better indoor air quality? This can be tricky because you have many different options. The two broad IAQ system categories are air filters and air purifiers. What’s the difference between these two, and is one a better choice for your home than the other?
It’s Actually an Unnecessary Choice!
The good news is that you don’t have to choose one or the other. Many homes use both; they aren’t mutually exclusive, and often pairing filters with the right air purifier is the only way to get the level of clean air that a home needs.
Air filters are mechanical systems that don’t require power. Most filters are made from a fiberglass mesh or other media that traps particles trying to move through them. Filters can be extremely powerful and stop pollutants down to 0.1 micron in size. However, they have limits and the highest strength filters won’t work with standard residential HVAC systems.
Air purifiers use electrical power and they remove pollutants from the air without physical media. The most common type of air purifier creates a field of ionization that charges unwanted particles with either a negative or positive charge. This causes the particles to clump together and either fall from the air or become for the filter to catch. Purifiers also have a set of charged plates to draw the particles. Another type of air purifier uses ultraviolet radiation to eliminate organic pollutants (bacteria, mold spores, viruses, and other microbes).
The Starting Point
If you are getting started with indoor air quality improvements for your home, we recommend you first look into an air filtration system. Almost any home can benefit from using filters. By the way, the blower filter on your HVAC cabinet is not useful for cleaning the air. It protects the interior of the HVAC cabinet.
It’s best to work with our Parker Services professionals when it comes to picking air filters. You’ll need our services to install the slot for the filters into the ductwork anyway, so have us come on early to select the filters. We’ll find the filter strength that will best clean the household air without putting resistance against airflow from the HVAC system.
Bringing in the Air Purifier
If the air filter you have isn’t powerful enough to stop all the particles you want to be eliminated from your home, we’ll consider the right air purification system to pair with it. The air purifier will remove particles that would otherwise slip through the filter or make it easier for the filter to trap them. We’ll look for an unbeatable combo of filter and purifier!