With the pandemic, we got serious about air filters and measurement, here are some notes after using some key tools in the last two years:
- Air quality monitor. We actually have two of them the Eve and the Kaiterra Laser Egg Plus which was one of the first monitors. There are now lots of them, but of the two the Kaiterra seems to work well. It is amazing to see how a closed-up house in heat gets lots of TVOC (volatile organic compounds)
- Nordic MERV-12 filters. We also put a relatively low-cost hospital-grade filter in. They cost about $60 for two at Amazon and are standard size. We definitely learned that we have a pretty clean house, but having this kind of air handling is nice insurance.
- BlueAir Pure 411+ air purifiers. There are now Homekit-controlled air purifiers, but we didn’t have these two years ago so readily available, so we pair these with Homekit SmartPlugs to turn them on and off. They seem to work well. At least the filters get really dirty in dirty environments.
