Homemade box fan air filter idea found at Inhabitat.com
When my son was young he got RSV. That was not fun, and for the first few years of his life after that he was very sensitive to allergens. Luckily, at about 4 he seemed to have outgrown those respiratory issues and now, at 5, they are a distant memory. During those first few years, however, my wife and I were always looking for ways to keep the air inside our home as clean as possible to prevent any asthmatic flare ups.
We bought a better vacuum cleaner with high-quality, filtered bags that sit inside a filtered outer bag, and we pulled my old air filter out of the closet and put it to work. Well, “work” is a generous description. I felt like that thing ran almost all the time without really doing anything. The amount of air being pulled through seemed to be pretty low. We looked into buying a better model, but the prices for a really good air filter can be pretty steep. And, whenever we got to the point of considering it, my son seemed to get better and we put the idea back up on the shelf.
Well, today I came across an article explaining how Dr. Jeffrey E. Terrell of the University of Michigan Health System’s Sinus Center came up with the idea of using a 20″x20″ box fan with a 20″x20″ furnace filter to create a homemade air filtration system for about $30. It’s an idea I wish I had seen 2 years ago. It’s so simple and so cost effective that I figured it is worth a shot. I will be running out to HEB this afternoon to grab a box fan and a filter, and will be testing this out.
I think the power of a box fan should be plenty to push a lot of air through the HEPA filter. I’ll give it a try and will update this post with some pics & results next week. In the meantime if you have a kid suffering from summer allergens, then this seems like a really easy way to get some of that junk out of the air. For some more info on the project and some pics, just follow the read more link below. If you decide to give it a try, please leave a comment and let us know how it works for you.
Read more: DIY: Make Your Own HEPA Air Filtration System for Just $30! Jeffrey Terrell DIY Airfilter – Gallery Page 0 – Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building