Amongst the things we learned over the past year is to not take the air we breathe for granted. While we can’t control what’s out there, many homeowners have been paying more attention to their indoor air quality, or IAQ. As a result, there have been many questions about residential air filters, and how effective they might be. Amongst the most reliable types are those that are defined as meeting the standard for “high-efficiency particulate air”, also known as HEPA. However, filtering is only half the challenge. Your HVAC system needs to send a certain volume of air through a HEPA filter to meet a clean air delivery rate, or CADR.
The bigger your home, the greater the fan capacity required to adequately circulate indoor air through your filters. Furthermore, many homeowners choose additional and/or more focused air cleaning by installing “air purifiers” in specific rooms. Although they don’t really “purify”, they do clean the air to a particular standard, as long as they are designed to serve the room size with an effective CADR. The bottom line is, you need to know which unit(s) will do the job, in terms of filtering out allergens like dust and dander, as well as bacteria and other contaminants.
