The Best Air Purifiers For Germs
If you’re concerned about the spread of disease in a home, you should be considering your options for an air purification system. Bacteria and viruses can be spread through the air in any type of enclosed space. If an infected person is in your home and sneezes or coughs, that person can create aerosolized particles that can carry the disease. If others walk around in the area, they run the risk of inhaling these particles and getting sick themselves.
There are many different types of diseases that can be spread in this manner. Some of the most common ones include the common cold, flu, chickenpox, and whooping cough. Other serious diseases that can be transferred through the air include anthrax, meningitis, measles, and diphtheria.
HVAC systems are designed to remove as many harmful particles from the air as possible. Still, even the best HVAC filters can’t catch the tiny virus particles that can often cause the worst sicknesses.
Types of Air Purifiers
You can choose to get a whole-house air purifier or several individual units for your home. The whole-house option can be hooked into your existing HVAC system and provide clean air to each room in your home. Individual units can be added as a supplement to a whole-house system in high-traffic areas of your home, such as a kitchen or living area. They can also be used by themselves.
Features to Look For
There are three different ways that air purifiers can capture and kill germs. Most units use a combination of UV light, a HEPA filter, and heat to deactivate viruses and bacteria so that they can’t reproduce in your body and cause an infection.
UV-C light is a high-energy light that can destroy the DNA and RNA of viruses and bacteria without causing any damage to humans. UV light has historically been used for several sterilization applications in medical and research settings and has proven to be useful in killing viruses and bacteria in the air. You can get a UV light that is mounted directly in an air purification system. The lamps will last for a long time, so you won’t have to replace bulbs very often. UV lights can also be mounted directly on the walls of your home. When air passes through your HVAC system or in front of a wall-mounted light, bacteria and viruses will be killed.
HEPA filters are the most effective at removing microscopic particles from the air. Most HEPA filters can get rid of up to 99.9% of particles down to 0.3 microns in diameter. These are highly effective for bacteria, which tend to range from 0.2 to 10 microns on diameter. Viruses are much smaller and tend to flow through a filter without getting stopped.
Heat is the most effective way of killing viruses and bacteria. Temperatures around 400 degrees Fahrenheit can kill all viruses and bacteria. Heat chambers are also highly effective at dealing with other types of indoor air pollution, such as allergens, mold, pet dander, and dust.
Choosing an air purifier with multiple forms of virus and bacteria destruction and capture can allow you to have peace of mind about the quality of the air in your home. Many models of purifiers have several stages that air has to go through to ensure that anything harmful has been removed. An HVAC professional from Jeffries Heating & Air + Plumbing can help you understand your options.
Proper Air Purifier Maintenance
Properly maintaining your air purification system is important to ensuring that it can run as effectively as possible. Dirty air filters or a burnt-out UV bulb can cause a system to let disease-causing particles through and put you and your family at risk. At Jeffries Heating & Air + Plumbing, we can maintain any make or model of air purifier you have in your Somerset home. We’ll replace dirty air filters and make sure that everything is functioning as it should.
Your Trusted HVAC Company
Jeffries Heating & Air + Plumbing is dedicated to offering exceptional HVAC services throughout Somerset. We’re a BBB-accredited business with an A+ rating, and we’ve been Screened and Approved by HomeAdvisor. We’re happy to help with any heating or cooling repair, installation, or maintenance job you have for us. We offer 24/7 availability for situations that need to be addressed as soon as possible. We never add any overtime charges to a bill.
To learn more about the HVAC services we offer in Somerset, KY, give Jeffries Heating & Air + Plumbing a call today.
