LESLIE: William in Iowa’s got a question about an air cleaner. How can we help?
WILLIAM: Well, I want to know if they’re worth the money to get. I keep seeing this Ionic Breeze Quadra. Now they’re going to give you two for the price of one and … should I buy one of those or … they’re 350 bucks a pop, you know. I don’t know whether I should or is there …
LESLIE: Well …
WILLIAM: … something I can buy to hook onto my furnace or what?
LESLIE: Oh, William, you are a smart man. Tom, take it away.
TOM: Well, it’s true that these portable units are getting very, very expensive. And the problem is that you need many of these to clean the air in your entire house. A better option is a whole home air cleaner; one that does install to your furnace, usually on the return duct side, William. The one that we recommend is Aprilaire. Aprilaire has an air cleaner called the Model 5000 which, for the last three years, was reported to be number one by Consumer Reports. And it’s so efficient, it’ll take out virus-size particles. And if you install an Aprilaire Model 5000, then you’re going to scrub the air in the entire house and it’ll actually cost you a lot less to operate that and to buy that than purchasing several of the portable units. Because you’re right, they’re very expensive and they’re noisy and they’re simply inconvenient to use. So a whole house …
LESLIE: Yeah, you would need 10 of those portable units for a 1,500 square foot home.
WILLIAM: Do they do the job, though?
LESLIE: The portable units? No. Because what’s happening is you get one of the portable units and you put it in the corner, say, of your living room. Now, the only air that it’s going to clean is the air that passes through it. So it’s the air that’s directly in front of it or right in the vicinity. It’s not doing anything for the air on the opposite side of the room.
WILLIAM: Right.
LESLIE: So then you’re going to need one for the opposite corner. And the other two corners. So now you’ve got four per room and now you’re looking at 1,200 bucks. Where with the Aprilaire whole house air cleaner, for around $700 to $1,000 it’s going to do every bit of air within your house because all of the air circulates through your heating and cooling system and all of it goes through the air purifier. So it’s going to do the best job. And as an added by-product of this, it will reduce the dust in your home so you won’t have to clean as often.
TOM: Now, William, we have, actually, one of these installed in my house and I have a hot water heated house, so I don’t have ducts that are used for heating the home in the winter time. But we actually have it in the duct system that’s used to cool the home in the summertime. So what we do is we actually turn on the fan for the air conditioner in the middle of the winter to circulate some of the air through and clean it. That’s how efficient it is.
WILLIAM: (overlapping voices) Well, I’ll be darned. I’m glad I called. I called the right people, then, to set me straight because I didn’t order one of those off the television until I talked to you guys. And I appreciate your show and enjoy it very much. Thank you.
TOM: You’re welcome, William. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT. If you want more information on that Aprilaire unit, you can go to their website at Aprilaire.com. It’s April-a-i-r-e.com.
Leave a Reply