Do I Need An Air Purifier For Each Room

Do I Need An Air Purifier For Each Room?

Air quality in the home is very important.

Not only do we spend at least half our life inside of our houses, indoor air quality can be much worse than outdoor.

But that does not mean that the air quality inside of our house is the same throughout the house?

Different rooms have different activities and different types of air pollutants to go along with those activities.

For instance, the kitchen is typically a hotspot for odors because that’s where the cooking happens.

Crafting rooms may have things like paints and adhesives that don’t necessarily have anything to do with,

the living room where dust is more of a problem because of the amount of traffic going through.

Basements, Garages, you get the point.

Do I need an air purifier in each room?

How many air purifiers do you need in a house?

Placing small air purifiers all throughout the house is a much more efficient way of keeping the air clean then trying to get one or two large units to do the entire job.

Most air purifiers work like a reverse fan. In other words they pull air, instead of blow air.

Multiple small fans through the house would circulate the air much better than one or two large fans.

How many air purifiers do you need in a houseThe exact same with air purifiers.

In the parts of the home where it is a little more open concept, like if your living room and dining room flow together, one air purifier can be efficient.

But closed off rooms will need their own air purifier.

Air purifiers do not work through walls.

Also Air purifiers clean the air directly around themselves the best.

So the bigger the area, the less efficient at cleaning the entire area an air purifier will be.

Placing an air purifier in the hallway, expecting it to clean the air in all the bedrooms adjacent, is not going to be very efficient at all.

Remember, Air purifiers do not work through walls.

The most popular air purifiers are basically HEPA fans that pull air through a series of filters.

Though the direction of the air is the opposite of a fan, the concept is the same. Air goes in one side and exits the other side.

You would not expect for a fan to cool off more than one room.

In a likewise manner, you should not expect for an air purifier to be able to pull air through itself in more than one room.

And even if you have a large fan, the air directly in front of the fan is going to be cooler than a hundred feet out.

It’s the same with a HEPA air purifier, even if it’s a large air purifier, the air directly around the air purifier is going to be cleaner than the air 100 feet out.

Will a small air purifier work in a large roomWill a small air purifier work in a large room?

Not efficiently unless you want to keep moving the air purifier around the room fairly often.

Just like you wouldn’t expect a small fan do cool a large room very well, you shouldn’t expect a small air purifier to be able to pull the air from a large room very well.

Will one air purifier work for the upstairs and downstairs?

The only way one stand alone air purifier will work for the upstairs and downstairs is if you move it from room to room.

The one exception, depending on whether you’re home is outfitted with it, is to place in duct air purifiers inside of the ductwork of your HVAC central heating and air unit.

Induct Air Purifiers

By placing the special air purifiers inside of the ductwork, you can effectively, depending on the square footage of your home, use one air purifier to clean the air throughout your entire house.

Whole house in duct air purifiers are the solution to not only having less air purifiers standing throughout your house, they are also much more efficient then using stand alone air purifiers.

Most people know that the ductwork can be extremely dirty. And where there is dust, there is dust mites.

Also the condensation from the AC coils add the perfect ingredient for the inside of the dark HVAC housing and ductwork to grow mold.

This essentially means but every time your air handler kicks on, it is kicking dust mites and mold spores into your home via the ductwork vents.

But through the use of in duct air purifiers, the air inside of your air handler can be clean and disinfected, distributing healthy air out of your vent work.

Also a problem that HVAC units have is they can distribute bad air from one area of the house to the rest of the house.

For instance, the fumes from the bathroom, can make it to the living room traveling through the duct.

Placing an HVAC in duct air purifier at the return and supply Vents will treat the air, not only being supplied but being returned into your unit. Circling clean air throughout your home.

Summary

How many air purifiers do you need in your houseHow many air purifiers do you need in your house?

Air purifiers run a little like a tower fan on low speed.

By using a fan working on low speed as an analogy,

And relating it to how many fans it would take to circulate and cool an entire house,

You can easily estimate how many air purifiers it would take to pull air through themselves effectively.

Using the same analogy, you can understand how placement of an air purifier is important to airflow.

Just like you wouldn’t expect a fan to be able to cool through a wall, you shouldn’t expect an air purifier to be able to pull air through a wall.

You wouldn’t expect one fan to be able to cool the upstairs and downstairs,
Likewise, air purifiers do not have the capacity to pull air through the entire house.

So the best answer to how many air purifiers you need is one in each room or rooms open to themselves.

There are a couple of exceptions.

One being that you could carry the air purifier from room to room. Alternating rooms every one or two days.

Another exception is putting whole house in duct air purifiers in your HVAC air handler.

Depending on the square footage of your home, One air purifier good clean the air in your entire home by effectively using your HVAC ductwork as the distributing mechanism for the air purifier.

Not only is this an excellent ideal because of the existing framework of your HVAC,

The HVAC itself can be very dirty inside with dust mites and mold spores that could be one of the primary reasons that the inside of your home suffers from poor air quality in the first place.

In duct air purifiers placed at the supply and return ducts of your home is a whole house air purification solution.

Published by

Dennis Reed

Dennis Reed Owner and Author @ BreatheBetterAir.org