Air Quality

Information on Electronic Air Cleaners

In Today's energy efficient homes and buildings, dust, pollen, mold spores, and chemicals become trapped creating an indoor pollution problem (up to 5-10 times more severe than outside air). Typical inexpensive throwaway furnace filters are not able to protect from many airborne contaminants.

One of the main contaminants we should be concerned with is "lung damaging dust". When we open a box of Tide or slam down a can of Ajax, particles are entered into the air. We breathe this air on a day-to-day basis (nearly half the air we breath in a lifetime is inside our homes). Since these particles can be 200 times smaller than pollen particles, it is important to have a proper air cleaning system that can remove or capture a greater percentage of the polluting particles.

Electronic Air Cleaners are able to capture up to 95% of contaminants that pass through them. This makes EACs 10 to 20 times more efficient than throwaway furnace filters.

EACs work through a process called "electrostatic precipitation". What happens is three fold:

1. The pre-filter screen catches most large particles, the ones you can see in a beam of sunlight. It's the tiny unseen particles, the ones that make up to 99% of the pollution in your home, that your EAC was designed to remove.
2. 2. Those invisible particles flow through the screen to the first section of the cell. As they pass they are hit by an electrical charge.
3. 3. Charged particles continue through the cell to the collecting area, where they stick like magnets to a series of plates with opposite electrical charges. Zap! No more pollutants.

We aren't telling you to put away your dust mop and swiffers just yet but, the reduction in pollutants will save time on cleaning!

Information on Humidity

Homes can have their relative humidity drop to as little as 15%, compared to the Sahara Desert's 25% relative humidity! Relative humidity is the actual amount of moisture in the air expressed, as a percent of the amount of moisture the air is capable of holding.

Temperature affects relative humidity as warm air holds more moisture than cold air. When 0 degree air enters your home for example, with relative humidity of 50% and is heated to 25 degrees, relative humidity plunges to less than 12%.

Without supplemental moisture your home quickly becomes bone dry. Low relative humidity affects your comfort since the air in your home is always trying to reach its saturation point. With this principle in mind, air will absorb water wherever it's found. That means it is stealing moisture from the bodies of you, your children, your pets, your furniture, and even your plants.

By losing moisture, our skin, throat and nasal passages dry out and crack leading to various physical discomforts. This is why doctors recommend humidifiers for allergy and asthma sufferers. Research has shown that 35% - 60% relative humidity is ideal. Outside of that range, bacteria, fungi, viruses, and mites thrive and multiply. As these creatures increase in number, so does your risk of being adversely affected.

Properly conditioned air can also save you money. Humid summer air feels hotter than it actually is because of the moisture it contains. Dialing down your thermostat just three degrees can reduce your heating bill by as much as 5%.

Information on Ultraviolet Air Purifiers

Molecular contaminants are 1000 times smaller than the smallest dust particle. Capturing these molecular contaminants with a filter is like trying to shovel sand with a tennis racket.

Lung tissue is by far the predominant way your body absorbs airbornecontaminants. Up to 75% of infections and allergy sources are passed from person to person in this manner. One reason is that the surface area of lung tissue averages 600 to 900 square feet while the surface area of the skin averages only 20 square feet.

Ultraviolet air purifiers recreate the effects of sunlight to naturally decompose, destroy, and purify contaminants. They will lower the bacteria count in a room more than would be obtained by ventilating the room at the rate of 100 air changes per hour. A normally ventilated house has one to three air changes per hour.

Ultraviolet light has four principle wavelengths; UV Air Purifiers utilize two of these wavelengths. The primary use of the UV light is to destroy the bacteria and all other microorganisms that pass through the chamber. It changes the DNA of a cell thus destroying the microorganism on a molecular level.

A toxicologist, Mr. Roger C. Inman was quoted as saying, "people get so excited about their drinking water and we only drink two liters of water a day. Yet, we breathe 20,000 liters of air a day and these poisons are directly absorbed by the lungs."

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