In this video I Want to take a moment to break down the indoor air quality industry if you will. If you're a homeowner in the market for one of these products, or maybe you're looking at a couple different products I Want to actually do a breakdown? This is something that I came up with to try to help a homeowner understand the different products or categories if you will. In other words, this isn't something that I pulled off the internet. What I'm trying to do in this video is break down the different categories, make you understand that not all indoor air quality products do the same thing.

So depending on your situation, depending on your home, depending on what's going on in the world. Last couple years we had the pandemic and then most recently we had those wildfires up in Canada causing different problems down here in the U.S I Think there was a particular day that New York City was rated the worst city in the world for air quality. At one point, a lot of homo owners have taken these moments in time to do something they've never done before and examine indoor air quality products that maybe they didn't before and so again, I'm going to break these down into categories, hoping that this can kind of help you understand what these different products do and so on. So let's get started on the six categories that break down indoor air quality products.

The first one is products that add stuff to the air and I don't really know how to describe it. Other than that, there are products that will add things to the air. things like ozone, things like maybe a sort of cleaner or some sort of chemical. and I'm going to spend less time on this category more than any other because I'm not really a fan of a lot of those products.

There are people out there that are sensitive to certain things they're sensitive to Ozone and things that will add stuff to the air. So I'm not saying you should avoid this category entirely. but I Do think as we go through the rest of these categories, you might find a better fit for your particular situation, a better solution for your situation. Next, let's talk about products that actually clean the air.

The products that follow in this category are products that when the air passes through the heating and air system, it actually cleans the air and there's different ways of doing that. Some of them use Technologies like UVC light, some of them use Technologies like particular metals that have shown to clean the air scientifically in one way, shape or form. but there's different types of products out there. I Would maybe even put certain ionizers under this category versus putting them in the first category because yes, they are adding something to the air.

but it's really they're adding more of like electrons and things that change the makeup of how the air operates so it's not necessarily adding something to the air that might affect you in all cases just depends on the product. But products that fall in this second category are products that will actually clean the air. And I Love the most of the products that fall in this category. I Think there are problems that folks have, whether it be breathing issues or issues in their home.

That products in this category are probably the best solution to fix a lot of those issues. So if you have a contractor talking to you about a specific product, a lot of the products that fall in the second category of actually cleaning the air might be your solution. Number three Products That I would say they clean components, so not so much that they're cleaning the air itself. but they're actually cleaning components.

And so one example of this might be a UV light bulb only that shines on the evaporator coil or the primary drain pan. They're not actually cleaning the air per se. They are a little bit to like, maybe a small degree, but not like a typical air cleaner where the air has to pass through these cells that the UV light will now clean the air and so on. But these lights that are just the bulb, they're going to shine on the evaporator coil.

They're going to clean that component. Anything that that light hits that the light can shine on, it's going to sanitize that in some way. And so products that clean that component in some situations might be your best solution. It just depends on what you've got going on.

Another product I can think of that might fall in this category is if you have, say a mini split that's getting kind of moldy. We've seen units that the fan will get kind of gunked up, the inside of that mini split will get kind of gunky or just this black buildup of mold and other components and installing some sort of UV light or some sort of cleaner that will clean that component. Not necessarily an air cleaner, but that component cleaner might be your best solution. So again, depends on the situation you might want to consider one of those products.

Moving on to our fourth category, I would say this category overall I would call it the filtration category. So air filters, filtering the air, filtration, removing components particulates harmful things through the air. Of course, there are some filters that filter better than others, some that add to the static pressure of your heating and air system, which may not be good for your heating and air system. especially if you've got a heating and air guy that's just throwing products in and not checking static pressures, but different products.

There's different values Merv ratings and so on of these products that you might want to keep an eye on, especially if you're the homeowner having some of these things installed. So something as simple as pulling out that disposable air filter in your filter Grill and adding some tight High Merv High Filtration air filter may not be the best solution, but looking at this category in a lot of cases, there are some times, especially like this recent scare where there was smoke in the air. where filtration is your best solution actually filtering the air and removing particulates from the air. You're not necessarily cleaning that air, you're filtering that air.

you're removing stuff from that air. Other products that fall in this category, or whole house home filters. The filters that have that real thick media, more surface area on that filter more than your disposable air filters that your square inches of coverage on a disposable filter might be, say, 600 square inches, 400 square inches. whatever it adds up to, right.

But then you have these media filters. Four inch thick filters that if you were to cut them and stretch them out, you have significantly more surface area, significantly better filtration. They last longer and so on. Other products that fall in this filtration category might be even like electronic air filters or electrostatic air filters.

Products like that that they're not actually a media of some type, but they still filter that air in some degree. So depending on your situation, you might want to consider a product from the filtration category. Our fifth category would be the ventilation category. This is the one that the thought process is.

if you have This bad air in your home, adding ventilation to your home would dilute that. So you're adding so much good air to your home. You're pulling in good air from outside in a lot of cases unlike recent times with this wildfires and so on. The air outside is actually better than the air inside that's actually healthier, cleaner air outside than that air that's inside your home.

A lot of folks don't realize that, but pulling and ventilation we've had customers actually say that they feel better having better ventilation added to their home. Because they have this tight home, they weren't getting in any fresh air. They were breathing recycled air even though it was going through their heating and air system. It maybe it was getting filtered, but it was still this recycled air.

High Vocs Whatever is in that home, bringing in that fresh air from outside might be the solution to making you feel better, making you breathe healthier air. Now, obviously, if you were in that situation like recently where the outside air was not healthy, it was not good to breathe. If you're going to be pulling in ventilation, you definitely want to make sure you're filtering that air. You're not just pulling in outside air.

you're pulling it outside air and then filtering it in some way. So just keep that in mind, kind of adding ventilation, but then going back to that filtration category that we were talking about before and then Finally, our last category would be humidity control. And humidity control affects more than just the air quality. It actually affects your comfort as well.

So if you imagine a really cool home, but it's high humidity, it can kind of feel clammy, right? right? Or it can feel warmer than it actually is. You might have a home that's 72 degrees with high humidity, and it might feel much warmer than a house that's drier air and 72 degrees. So humidity does affect your comfort, but humidity also affects other things. So when you have a more humid home, you invite the possibility of things like mold or mildew being able to grow in your home.

If you have the air too dry in your home, then you invite the possibility of the drier air causing other issues. And we did a video where we talked about the humidity control chart where you want to be kind of in that range between 30 and 50 percent. Some folks will even say as high as 60 percent. It just kind of depends.

But you don't really want to be any higher than 60 or any lower than 30 because both dry and humid air can cause issues. So that last category would of course be humidifiers or dehumidifiers. Things that can control roll the humidity in your home. Maybe your air conditioning system doesn't remove enough humidity.

Maybe in the winter time, it's just super dry air in there. You need to add some moisture to the air. just kind of depends on the situation. But just realizing that you might want to look in that category to be a long-term Fix You May have products that are cleaning the air, but then you've got humidity issues and that invites a whole nother set of issues.

So obviously we've gone over several different categories depending on your situation, depending on what part of the country you're in, depending on the folks that are in your home and how sensitive they are to certain things, it may play a role in not just the array of products out there, but you know, looking at these different categories and narrowing it down on maybe I need to get a product out of, say, the filtration category And let's go ahead and add an air cleaner. Or maybe I'm going to do an air cleaner and then I need to adjust something with the humidity or ventilation or so on. Let me know what your thoughts are. Have you purchased an indoor air quality product before? only to find out that you needed to actually get a product from a different category that we covered in this video.

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