The house we live in has an old electronic air cleaner attached to the furnance. It's a Honeywell F50E 1182. We have lots of wildfire smoke in the PNW right now and am wondering if using this system or putting a regular pleated insert in like they do in this video would be better at filtering out wildfire smoke. I have a 20x20x4 filter I could put in if so.
Wildfire smoke : old electronic air cleaner or normal pleated filter better
air-filterfilterfurnacehvac
Related Solutions
Air filters are intended to:
Protect HVAC equipment.
Mitigate air-quality issues.
The manufacturer will specify requirements necessary for normal equipment service life.
Until there are actual air quality issues, there is no reason to upgrade filters.
Monitoring air quality may be appropriate because some air-quality issues are better mitigated elsewhere from the filter.
Replace. Some say that filter media is meant to be washed and reused, but my experience is it passes ginormous amounts of dirt.
If it were up to me, I would throw that away and install 2" pleated MERV 7 (or 8) disposable pleated filters. I usually purchase these from a local supply house that specializes in air filters because they will often sell any size needed for a reasonable price. The prepackaged media available in hardware stores can be okay in a pinch, but they are often a poor value and those stores usually do not sell anything thicker than 1" pleated.
A 2" pleated Merv 7 Filter looks something like this:
Actual width and height are typically 1/2 inch under nominal. Actual thickness is typically 1/4" under nominal. (16 x 20 x 2 nominal is actually 15.5 x 19.5 x 1.75 to give installation clearance). Air filter supply houses specializing in this media can usually fabricate these to order at a reasonable price. These are called "pleated air filters, MERV 7 (or MERV 8)." The MERV rating refers to the particle size that the filter traps. Higher number gives tighter filtration, but most residential blowers cannot tolerate a filter more restrictive than MERV 8.
Best Answer
The electrostatic filter will be your best option to filter the smoke, you may need to clean it every week until things clear up, putting a filter that has a finer particulate rating than your system is designed for can cause problems. Your best bet now is to turn the fan on all the time so your air is getting constantly cycled over the grid. If you haven’t cleaned the filter hose it down now so it will be functioning at its peak performance. I have a granddaughter that has serious as a problems and the electrostatic on the furnace keeps the air inside clean enough she doesn’t end up in the hospital. The last time I also closed down the make up air intake as to reduce the amount of fresh air because of the smoke load. With the electrostatic you don’t want to slow the air exchanges these filters when clean are more effective at reducing smoke. A high density filter reduces the air exchanges so it is not as good even if it could take out the finer particles.