For years I've suffered horribly with hayfever and polluted environments, the latter can give me quite serious problems. I recently put an air purifier in my bedroom and another in my office.
My God, it's like night and day. Why didn't I do this years ago?
If you're struggling and have never considered one then I strongly recommend that you look at them.
Quiet, inobtrusive and very effective. Mine was abut £300 but they seem to range from £100 to a gazillion, the most significant factor seems to be the size of your space and thus the power that you need.
You may find this helpful, but it is US oriented....
www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-purifier/
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And you dont have to get your pinny on and get your duster as often. Its win win.
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Yes, but apparently frequent filter vacuuming is required.
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Interesting. I always wake up stuffed up. The steamy atmosphere in the shower seems to provide a reset. Whether it's any sort of allergy I have never considered.
I am having a ventilation system in the new house. It will extract air from the kitchen and bathrooms, and exhaust it via a heat exchanger through a roof vent. Replacement air picks up recovered heat and is pushed into the other rooms. It does have filters, your post prompts me to enquire a bit more deeply about what sort and if there are any options/upgrades.
The system provides all fresh air and improves energy performance. It would be very expensive job to install in an existing house. In our new build it's around £5,000. I'm surprised that I can't see many developers putting them in, presumably they don't think they sufficiently improve saleability - there's nothing to see except for the ceiling valves.
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>> job to install in an existing house. In our new build it's around £5,000. I'm
>> surprised that I can't see many developers putting them in,
As am I given that new builds will have gas boiler installations banned soon - 2025 was the given date, thats in 4 years time! It will shift of course.
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>> As am I given that new builds will have gas boiler installations banned soon -
>> 2025 was the given date, thats in 4 years time! It will shift of course.
>>
The MVHR doesn't heat the air, only recovers heat from the removed air - about 80%. But it does mean that I don't need draughty window vents etc and significantly improves airtightness. Hopefully will mean the heat pump has less to do.
I'm sure the developers know better than I do what people will pay for, and perhaps we won't get the money back for the high level of insulation, MVHR and heat pump. The builders of larger houses are now putting in underfloor heating downstairs, but usually rads upstairs. We're doing underfloor throughout.
Fingers crossed that, when we or our heirs come to sell, there will be somebody prepared to pay a bit more for a proper job. If not, I'm not that bothered. Were I doing it to make money I'd have built a pair of semis and moved on, but at this stage of our lives we just want to make the most of it and as long as we don't actually run out of money it doesn't matter.
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Like many hay fever sufferers my problem began with the notoriously hot, dry 1975 summer. I suffered for years after from violent sneezes and streaming nose and eyes. Then I needed a cataract operation and warned the surgeon, as I didn't want him losing his stroke if I sneezed at at a critical stage.
He said he would give me something to dampen the reflex pro tem but asked if I had tried acupuncture as a cure. He said it was available at our local hospital. I would never have got into what I then regarded as mumbo jumbo but this hint from a credible expert propelled me into the clinic.
Treatment involved inserting needles in and around the ears and passing a mild electric current through them for a few minutes. My ears were pierced for metal studs and I was told to pinch on them whenever I thought of them. Treatment was weekly for seven weeks and a complete success, so I suggest trying it out first before coughing up for an expensive machine.
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>>Treatment involved inserting needles in and around the ears and passing a mild electric current through them for a few minutes. My ears were pierced for metal studs and I was told to pinch on them whenever I thought of them. Treatment was weekly for seven weeks and a complete success
I'm pleased that worked for you, but it sounds horrendous. I think I'll go with the machine, thanks.
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Agreed, (not teaching you to suck eggs here - just for others interest) but the idea is that we, by pure habitation (body heat, cooking, appliances, light bulbs etc) generate a fair amount of heat and the idea is that heat is then recovered to reduce the amount of other heating required. Underfloor heating is never going to properly heat a house, - even a well insulated one - without that assistance. There is also talk of ground source heat pumps, not seen many of those being installed.
Tho to be fair, with our now changing climate - severe winters becoming a thing of the past - our heating requirements are changing.
Anyway being an old traditionalist in a 1930s build, I have just had my boiler replaced, and the domestic hot water reconfigured, now all being pumped.
Last edited by: VxFan on Sat 29 May 21 at 21:19
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I know someone with a ground source heat pump but he has a field which was dug up to install it. You can also go directly downwards to get heat from the ground. Either way it costs a bob or two. And you have to have a pump running to shift the heat around which also costs (and can be noisy).
OTOH I thought I understood that underfloor heating was pretty efficient, albeit slow to warm up (and cool down!). You get heat throughout the entire room area rather than just around the rads/fire, and the materials in the house and the walls etc get warmer than with rads. Could of course be wrong.
Neighbour has pumped hot water which puts it at mains pressure, but I've not yet understood the benefits except he doesn't need a power shower to get a decent stream.
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This isn't a passive house. Let's just say I'll be disappointed if we cant't heat the house with it! This isn't low wattage electric, it's a wet system covering the whole floor area in the habitable areas. The circulating water is quite a bit cooler than you would have in rads from a gas boiler, nearer 40 degrees than 70, but the area is much bigger. Each zone/room has it own thermostat. It's a correctly sized Mitsubishi air source heat pump. We have enough garden for ground source but we had to draw the line somewhere so we'll be refrigerating the air of Hertfordshire instead.
The challenge of course is how it copes in sub-zero temperatures. I know it won't be as reactive as rads but the house, although not to passive standards, is so much better insulated than even current building standards and with the heat recovery on the MVHR I'm assured it's well on top of the job. That said we will have a wood burner in the sitting room in case of breakdowns!
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>> Neighbour has pumped hot water which puts it at mains pressure, but I've not yet
>> understood the benefits except he doesn't need a power shower to get a decent stream.
Well put it like this, filling up the bath (and its a bigun - cast iron jobbie) used to take 30 minutes. Its now full in 7. Its a 2 bar whole house monsoon pump.
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>> Well put it like this, filling up the bath (and its a bigun - cast
>> iron jobbie) used to take 30 minutes. Its now full in 7. Its a 2
>> bar whole house monsoon pump.
>>
Our HW won't be pumped, it will just be at mains pressure, derived from the mains - no dead pigeon tank. The heating circuit(s) will be pumped of course. No shower pumps.
Last edited by: VxFan on Sat 29 May 21 at 21:19
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>> Our HW won't be pumped, it will just be at mains pressure, derived from the
>> mains - no dead pigeon tank. The heating circuit(s) will be pumped of course. No
>> shower pumps.
My mains is only 7 litres per minute, insufficient for most form of instant heating. Cold and hot water storage was the only option. (apart from diggin up 20 yards of driveway, and two yards of public paving)
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>>My mains is only 7 litres per minute
Colleague was having problems with water leaks and put a pressure guage on the incoming mains. 5.3 Bar daytime and suspected it was even higher at night! Found most stuff is only rated to 5, so fitted a pressure reducing thingmy.
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>> Underfloor heating is never going to properly heat
>> a house, - even a well insulated one - ...
Ours seems to manage OK. What are we doing wrong?
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>>Interesting. I always wake up stuffed up.
Me too, but not now. And according to those who insist on being listened to, I have stopped snoring - which has long been cause of a complaint.
I have no idea if it is just me, or what, but I do know for me that it is of terrific value and I have no intention of ever being without one again.
Aside from the direct effects I already feel, I just like the idea of breathing cleaner air generally.
Mine has HEPA filters, if that means anything of use.
HEPA filter captures 99.97% of particles of 0.003 microns , 3-layer filtration with NanoProtect HEPA, active carbon filter and pre-filter captures 99.97% of ultra-fine particles as small as 0.003 microns (3), so you are safe from PM2.5, bacteria, pollen, dust, pet dander, gas and other pollutants. Certified by the European Centre for Allergy Research Foundation.
It claims it is tested against Coronavirus also. I have no idea of the validity or value of that.
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>>It claims it is tested against Coronavirus also.
Doesn't mean it passed! I was tested at several GCE 'O' levels
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>> It claims it is tested against Coronavirus also. I have no idea of the validity
>> or value of that.
It has none.. If you want the virus killed you need a UV light. Kills it stone dead, but you wake up with no skin.
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I set a smallish UV strip light up in my garage as a small project soon after I read about what they did. Hardly used it though as I don't know how long it takes to kill the virus.
I even put it on an automation such that if it was turned on it disabled the (motion detected) garage light so if the garage light failed to come on as you walked in it was alerting you that the UV may be on.
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Exposure to UV is very bad for your eyes, certainly a reason for early cataracts (and other eye conditions).
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I've had plenty of UV - especially when we lived in Tenerife, and my mince pies are okay @ 68 years Jung.
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Not good for your skin either, which is why I set up a sort of warning system for if the light was in use. It's the medical grade germicidal light which I out in, as anything less would have been pretty pointless.
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>>It's the medical grade germicidal light
I have a UV system to zap the bugs from my private water supply here. There wasn't on in place in ye olde quintessential Cornish country cottage from which we drank the borehole water for 9 years.
My ole mate Lauri the leather craftsman drank the water straight out of his flooded quarry for 30 years and lived to the grand old age of, um, 69.
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Air Purifiers - Zero
