If you are concerned with the air quality in your home, there are a lot of options available that work to improve air quality, but what is the best option? Your HVAC system is essential to providing fresh, temperature-controlled air throughout your home, and it is understandable if each time your blower kicks in you find yourself wondering if you are doing enough to keep yourself and your family breathing clean air. Well, what can you do about it?
Below, we discuss the benefits of both air purifiers AND air filters, as well as which is more important if you are looking for a single solution. If air quality is your top priority, it’s important to be confident in the decision that you make, and we are happy to help you understand your options and the importance of these decisions.
The Benefits of Air Filters
Installing a high-quality air filter in your HVAC unit is an important step to take in order to ensure that your air delivery system is blowing clean, filtered air in each room of your home. Otherwise, you may simply just be recycling the same dust particles throughout your house that are negatively impacting you and your family’s breathing. By installing a filter in a duct, you are actively putting a defense mechanism into the system that is actively filtering ALL off the air that is being cycled through your HVAC ducts.
When your HVAC unit kicks on, it draws air through the ducts and pushes this air through the system, warming or cooling it through your central unit in the process. The air is then split through the air supply ducts to deliver temperature-optimized air to the rooms at the end of the ducts, before new air is then returned to the central unit through the return air ducts. If there is no filter between your return air ducts and your furnace or air conditioning unit, each particle that has been disturbed in the room will eventually end up into the system and pushed back out, likely into other parts of your home.
By using 17x21x1″ air filters for AC & furnace between the return air ducts and your central heating or cooling unit, you are actively combatting the spread of fine particulate matter and irritants such as pet dander, pollen, dust mites, mildew, fungus, bacteria, mold, fibers, and more.
The Benefits of Air Purifiers
Air purifiers are also important in the fight against airborne irritants, although they function much differently than air filters installed directly into your central air system. Air purifiers are standalone units that work by ionizing, absorbing, or neutralizing irritants in a single room. They have an intake with a pre-filter, a main purification system (electrical fields, activated charcoal filters, UV lights, and other mechanisms), and then a blower that pushes the purified air back into the room. They work to remove the same irritants that your HVAC air filters would, but they are room-specific and are unable to provide you with filtration across your entire home at once.
The problem that you will run into with an air purifier beyond the fact that they only work in a single room is that they will only capture airborne particles that pass by their one intake. In comparison, your HVAC system has a return duct in every room, meaning that you have an opportunity to collect additional irritants in each room.
