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Multi Taskers - Air Quality

Brent Dowell

Brent Dowell

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Reno NV
Well with all the fires going up and down the west coast, that smoke has to go somewhere, and it likes to go east, so a lot of it is hitting Reno. We are in that dark blob in the middle which is the worst quality, which is '420' right now. That's pretty thick. You can feel it in your throat and eyes. Washoe county issued a 'stage 2' air quality alert for the first time in history, which judging from the way they talk about it must mean it's pretty bad.

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So time to break out some of the shop gear. The grizzly 2 stage 1 micron air filter gets relocated to the living room. All windows closed up, swamp cooler turned off.
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The Trend Airshield gets put on for any outdoor excursions, lol. Looks goofy, works good.
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Good idea on moving the air cleaner. You might even be able to find a MERV 13 air filter for it. I paid big bucks for my JDS air cleaner and now, for some mysterious reason it stopped running... and the company's closed.:mad:
 
I think I would call that a clear day were I live in SE Washington. But we have it good. My daughter lives in Clackamas, Or. Can't even see the house across the street from her and they are packed and ready for level 3 evacuate, have been for the past week.
 
My first wife (and still great friend) lives in Medford OR. We texted back and forth yesterday, and so far she and her partner are safe, but they have friends and co-workers who've lost everything.
 
Vaughn McMillan said:
My first wife (and still great friend) lives in Medford OR
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Medford was terrible and could have been a LOT worse. I'm seeing estimates of 600+ houses (and a bunch of businesses) lost, that was with holding it on the southern end/ and mostly along the -5 corridor. Had it gotten further into town it would have been a lot worse. I hate to use the term "lucky" in a case that so clearly wasn't but man it could have been so much worse.

Not declaring clear yet there what with fires to the NE and SW of them still but those are mostly a bit of a ways away or have at least burned out some on the town side. So fingers crossed.

Air here has improved inside the house some today, we're down to 3,400 small particle count in the house so about half yesterday. From what I can figure that's an inside Air Quality Index of around 60, which is at least down to "moderate". Outside "looks" a bit better, probably AQI in the mid 300's to low 400's down from the high 400's to low 500's so I think we'd getting a bit less infiltration due to that. So that's nice :)
 
My son flies for FedEx. He spent last week flying daily flights between Portland, Or. and Oakland, Cal. He said it was unbelievable the size and number of fires... He spent a lot of time just instrument flying because of such low visibility in take-off and approaches. Last day on return from Oakland to Portland, he had to divert to Boise, Id. because of no visibility in Portland. One of his most exhausting weeks he has spent flying for FedEx.
 
Ryan Mooney said:
Medford was terrible and could have been a LOT worse. I'm seeing estimates of 600+ houses (and a bunch of businesses) lost, that was with holding it on the southern end/ and mostly along the -5 corridor. Had it gotten further into town it would have been a lot worse. I hate to use the term "lucky" in a case that so clearly wasn't but man it could have been so much worse.

Not declaring clear yet there what with fires to the NE and SW of them still but those are mostly a bit of a ways away or have at least burned out some on the town side. So fingers crossed.

Air here has improved inside the house some today, we're down to 3,400 small particle count in the house so about half yesterday. From what I can figure that's an inside Air Quality Index of around 60, which is at least down to "moderate". Outside "looks" a bit better, probably AQI in the mid 300's to low 400's down from the high 400's to low 500's so I think we'd getting a bit less infiltration due to that. So that's nice :)
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Ryan, you seem to know of this stuff, so I will ask.... does a mask help at all in this king of smoke, by mask I am speaking or the ones they claim helps prevent the spread of the virus? I know when I have been to the store, where I am required to wear a mask, it seems to reduce the smoke smell while I have a mask on.
 
Paul Douglass said:
Ryan, you seem to know of this stuff, so I will ask.... does a mask help at all in this king of smoke, by mask I am speaking or the ones they claim helps prevent the spread of the virus? I know when I have been to the store, where I am required to wear a mask, it seems to reduce the smoke smell while I have a mask on.
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I'll pipe in here since I worked in the environmental field for a number of years (20) prior to retiring. The answer is yes and NO or it depends. the type of mask will depend on it effectiveness. you are concerned about what are referred to as PM 2.5 and PM 1 particles. Particles the are smaller than 2.5 microns (PM-2.5 and PM 1) will get past the noise hairs and deep down into the lungs and in the case of PM -1 be absorbed into the blood. So if a mask is rated for PM 2.5 it will prevent the particle less than 2.5 microns from getting into you lungs and obviously PM 1 is better since since it will provide further protection. carona virus particles are between .14 and .0625 microns so they are even smaller than. The particles in wild fire smoke is between .4 and .7 microns. The surgical masks are rated at 3 microns so to be totally effective you need to get a respirator mask that as a rating of at least N95. and that is not totally effective since they are rated down to .3 microns.
 
If I were living in an area where I had to worry about the hazards of smoke I would probably invest in an electrostatic participator as part of my home ventilation system we had 5 of them on the submarine and they were very effective at removing particles from the air. They are commonly used to reduce smoke stack emissions and you can get them for your home use. They cost between $300-$500 so they are not that expensive.
 
Pretty much as Don said. A P100 would be pretty decent, an N95 or KN95 would be better than nothing. The problem we have right now where I am (and you are I think) is that it is a lot of the really small stuff that's travels over to us so we have dense clouds of really fine particles which are kind of the worst.

OTOH there's a bit of a numbers game where you can look at any reduction being better than no reduction, and combined with other mitigations it all can help (don't open doors, block vents, etc..). If you can smell it less.. it's helping to some degree, how much and at what level and whether it's the really nasty bits.. hard to know for sure..

The micron rating is also a smidge misleading in that the non-woven mask material (like used on the N95's) will also capture some meaningful percentage of stuff a lot smaller than they are technically rated for (and don't capture 100% of the stuff they are.. just more of it). Basically there are two mechanisms to block particles, first is "doesn't fit through the hole", this works ok for larger particles but not as much for small particles. The N96 & up material is also electrostatically charged so it tends to attract small particles as "they go by". You might also note I mentioned "non woven", this is important because the more random structure (compared to woven) means there aren't linear paths for the particles to travel through so they have more chances to get stuck on the way by.

It might be interesting to note that the Blue 211+ I had noted before that the Boss is considering includes electrostatic filtration and that does come down to the $200 range fairly frequently on sale.. so there are options in the sub $300 range now.
 
Don Baer said:
one thing about putting an electrostatic participator on your air handler is you wont need a filter. We used to clean the ones on the boat with formula 409. The will eventually pay for themselves.
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That's a good thing to know! We were talking about the "if we ever have to replace the whole setup".

It looks like you'd probably want a two stage unit at that size to minimize ozone production which looks like it might be a smidge high otherwise. I wonder if that's partly why a lot of them are combo filter + electrostatic precipitator (so you can go lighter on the latter)?
 
Ryan Mooney said:
That's a good thing to know! We were talking about the "if we ever have to replace the whole setup".

It looks like you'd probably want a two stage unit at that size to minimize ozone production which looks like it might be a smidge high otherwise. I wonder if that's partly why a lot of them are combo filter + electrostatic precipitator (so you can go lighter on the latter)?
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a lot of work has been done and they have found that by reducing the electrode thickness and heating the corona wires they can reduce the O3 by as much as 85 percent. Also 2 stage units are better yet.I imagine the more expensive unit would incorporate some or all of these features.
 
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