What I have done is add pre filters to catch the larger particles. This way you won't clog the finer filter with the thick stuff. Throw away the cheaper coarser filters more often and conserve the finer filters.
Totally unnecessary. If you're using them in your house they take forever to clog up. Now, maybe if you're using it in a wood shop or if you're in an area with wildfire smoke, sure, add pre filters. Keep in mind the more dense the filter the harder the fan has to work to pull air in.
@@one7decimal2eight Not true. I've tried it with and tried it without. You'd be surprised how much the cheap filters will catch. Don't believe me? Just try it out yourself in within a few weeks you'll see.
@@one7decimal2eight Also a higher merv ratting can and will freeze your A coil and damage you compressor becuse the A coli froze up. Trust me my old system would build up 4" of ice and tottaly stop the air flow. Making the system work really hard and high electric bills. You should avoid closing off rooms and closing vents you want the air to move without restrictions.
I'm not sure why other window fans have become such pieces of garbage ua-cam.com/users/postUgkxGjG43--gYqIoT4Xkur2PqCrtbKwTv2h6 but this one definitely is nice. It's quiet, it has buttons for different functions that you generally don't have to keep pressing over and over again like some of the others, and the remote is a nice feature. Still, button simplification could go further to single functions for each and every one, but it's decent enough. It's a very quiet fan, the quietest window fan that I have ever had, and that alone is worth the extra money over the cheaper ones.
As a toxic mold survivor, I gotta say this is amazingly helpful. This is actually something that people with extreme mold sensitivity and reactions does to help keep them from getting sick, disabled, etc... But I’ll be doing this as an ac unit as well in the hot summer since I can’t use my ac system as mold is inside them and would blow mycotoxins all over my home, belongings and myself. Thanks so much!!!!!
Exactly what I'm dealing with now. I'm in low income housing and we have a central ac, been running for 3 days and I already smell the mold. I have my ION fan going, but looking for more options. I have severe heat sensitivity so I need to use the AC.
@@WisdomAgreements I totally get all of that. I’d rather be hot and learn how to cool my home and body down vs get more mold suck and ruin my things again.
It may be too expensive (cost me my $200 covid support check), but one thing I did was get the AirFree mini incinerator air cleaner, to actually kill rather than just trap mold & mycotoxins. I don't know how much it would help if the problem is in the air conditioner itself, but I know it's helped in my intractably moldy bathroom. I know another thing my doctor did was put me on Milk Thistle Extract for mold toxicity, and it helped me a lot. Best of luck on your healing journey!!
If you have a fan pull air through an area of water there won't be expensive filters to change, just need to replace the water periodically. The rainbow vacuum uses the same idea.
I do and have the 1 side version and love it. Not concerned at all with a virus, im concerned with inhaling random particulates into my lungs that i can see when the light comes thru the window sometimes.
Ignorance of the specifics of COVID-19 aside (understanding this is 3 years ago, hype and misinformation was still strong), duct taping these to your fan make a huge mess of these cheap box fans when you go to pull it off and replace the soiled filters. I use painter's tape, it's perfectly fine for adhesive power and peels of easily and doesn't leave duct tape's residue and paint peeling. My only advice is to invest in a solid fan, with a moderate to high CFM even if you are using it for a smaller space (mine is in a 20x15sqft room). The one linked in the description is approx 1800CFM, not terrible but there are slightly more powerful out there that really make a difference in the air flow as long as you don't go overboard on the MIRV ratings.
Fyi. I just bought the Filterbuy 20x20x2, Merv11. It came from Amazon "bare" (no wrapping or labels) inside a DUSTY cardboard box. Now, I wonder if the integrity of the pricey filters are compromised. Ugh..
The Merv 13 filter can stop a particle .3 microns in size, however the corona virus is .1 micron. Bottom line is corona slides through a Merv 13 easily.
Rather than the fan pointing up, are there advantages to orienting the fan so the out-flowing air can be aimed at myself to provide an evaporative cooling effect in warmer conditions? Is the outgoing air moving so much slower as to not provide much evaporative cooling effect? Disadvantages? (perhaps somewhat lower structural strength)? This would result in putting the cardboard blocking surface on the bottom, opposite the control knobs. ----> ----> ----> ----> ----> ----> rather than ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ | | | | | | | | | ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ | | | | | | | | |
I think UP would help re circulation, thus moving air, allowing the cube to purifiy more and more air. Having a cube simply aimed at your face wouldn't have the same effect on entire rooms.
Duct tape the sides in the back it has to be a good seal or dust and stuff will go to the openings too,virus particulate is .1 micron polled is .3 etc etc,merv is just to thick use a thiner one or you will over heat your fan or worse,justsayn.
Please don’t waste your money. Use this to clean your shop air for wood dust. Don’t think you are actually gonna stop coronavirus with this Mickey Mouse set up. Lol
Three months ago I made two of these and began using them in our two story house. There was an immediate noticeable decrease in dust on furniture and floors. Best of all, we realized after a few weeks we no longer wake up at 3 am with sinus/allergy headaches. We are breathing easier. Thank you!
Good to know that this system works for you. I've done what many people have done, used one filter on the backside of a box fan, but this one is far out!
I used one and it helped clean allergens out of the air. Much better! They made me feel foggy and groggy and even kinda boggy. Now I think clearly, and my IQ jumped 50 points! Would be more impressive if my total IQ wasn't 88.
Pizza ... have seen similar on both wood shops and auto body shops. There's even commercial versions sold, although more expensive. OTOH, the commercial units are rated to be explosion proof. (chemicals, etc)
I've been using cheap 20x20 air filter taped to a cheap box fan in my work shop for years. I lightly fog the filter with some spray adhesive. Work's great for capturing over spray particals when painting.
@@derrinpickett9948 what level filters are u using? I just bought some merv 10 filters at $25 a piece, but I was thinking of buying the cheaper ones and spraying them and seeing if it works as good as the higher merv filters Do your filters work on smoke when sprayed?
I'm remodeling a house and this just gave me some ideas on how to setup a filtration system to help keep from contaminating the finished rooms with construction dust and keep the room air a bit healthier.
I live in Southern Oregon and during the last ten years we have had the worst fire seasons ever!!! Even with all the windows closed, we still have smoke pollution entering our home. If you have ever had to deal with smoke inhalation over months at a time, you will understand how important this simple invention is...Thank You for this simple, effective, and potentially life saving device!!!
@@Nunnia222same question. For a second, he spoke of arrows on filters, but not on fan. Any answer on trial and error? (Wildfire 2.5 particulate indoors because my windows are not airtight.)
Yeah. . What the heck ? Nice idea but if it is not powerful enough to pull in pieces you want and need to filter out it's nice but maybe a better idea is to save up for one built with specs to do the job.
@@tmorgan7939 i made mine like this model 1 week ago and is not worth the 50 i spent in the 4 "7" rated filters. Doesn't work. I works better to put just 1 filter attached in the back of the fan
Put basic foam or cloth outside filters as a prefilter to extend filter life. Prefilter catches larger particles. Clean prefilter from time to time with vacuum cleaner.
...and use a pre-filter on your vacuum filter. Then, vacuum your vacuum's pre-filter and filter with a second pre-filtered vacuum. Continue forever. :D
They have a link in the description for Amazon to buy the cardboard cutout 😂 I'm sure everyone has a old cardboard box in their garage that they can use.
I did a basic version of this when we were choking with wildfire smoke back in August, worked well and it was pretty obvious how much it was filtering out of the air in the house.. About the only thing I would change here is to run the fan vertically, as it was designed. Laying it horizontal like that is begging for a motor or bushing failure, depending on how that motor is designed to run. Leave it standing like it was meant to be.
The fan is on top to increase air flow & filtration. If it was vertical you have less filtration and higher air resistance and higher loads on the motor.
@@dougc78 How so? Gravity cannot be of much help here. If the bottom of the box was cardboard, and all other sides were filters, you would have the exact same amount of air flow and pressure with the fan sitting in its vertical position, as designed.
According to Camparetto, the HVAC engineer who designed this system, it was designed with a horizontal fan because particles, even microscopic ones, settle due to gravity. That means, first, that the density of contaminants is greater near the floor. A vertical fan pulls contaminants in from the air column on one side of the room, and blows the clean air into the other side of the room. Contaminants already on the downwind side of the room are simply blown further across the room, and they can easily collect in eddies. A horizontal fan pulls the particles in from near the floor, where they are in higher density, and blows the clean air up; the resultant air currents push contaminants from the corners of the room back towards the filter box. It's a more efficient way of cleaning the entire air volume of the room.
Best option is to use those cheapo filters in the furnace so you don’t restrict your hvac system and then use little filter systems like this in each room. You’ll catch so much junk.
Northern California: Made one 2 weeks ago, the day our area started to get bad air from big Tamarack Fire 3 hrs away. works perfectly! Did not have any duct tape, used Tvek tape instead. Air filter is placed in front of old glass door in kitchen that goes out to patio.
Aug3- Usung it now about 3-1/2 weeks: dyi air filter works really really well. Had 5 days bad air&;all ok. put it in daily even when air ok - noticeable difference in using less daily asthma inhaler.
I'm in Nor Cal as well and with an AQI of over 450 today, I'm thinking I will head to Lowe's tomorrow to make this. Our whole family just finished with having covid and 2 of us have lost our sense of taste and smell so I have no idea if it smells smokey inside, at least this way, I can see the filters getting dirty!
Aiming the filter outside is not as good of an idea as it sounds. The fan sucks dirty air in but blows clean air out. When you point the fan outside, it draws more dirty air from outside back into your home. If you put it in a room, it circulates the air and dust. It sucks the dust into the filters and blows clean air in the room. It can leave you with cleaner air in the room than you have outside. That's what you want.
Early in the pandemic, I had envision people setting these up everywhere, hanging from the ceiling in school hallways, over restaurant tables, etc. but of course we hardly saw any of these at all.
@@Juangomez9186 Placing more filters in the air return typically requires increasing the power to the centrifugal air pumps due to the higher resistance as HVAC, even home HVAC are designed for the 25% filtration of fibreglass air filters. At the very least, the filter housing would have to hold thicker filters such as 4" or 6" thick MERV-13 to reduce the resistance (the thicker filters have deeper folds hence more surface area for the air to flow through). Then there's also how many times the HVAC are designed to cycle the air in the room in a given period of time. Portable air purifiers would be less expensive than retrofitting the HVAC with better filtration and could offer more directed and more frequent filtration.
@@johnwang9914 not always. There’s the iWAVE air scrubber which isn’t a filter. There’s bypass HEPA filters so it’s not fully blocking the duct. Then you have product like the SoliceAir purification systems. Both UVV and UVC lights to combat odors and surface/airborne viruses. Along with their Micropower guard filter which is 1 inch, also ionizes particles,and can filter out particles down to .03 microns in size with air resistance the same as a standard 1” pleated filter. These are usually the systems schools and corporations install.
@@moorefilmltd UV-C takes a few seconds to sterilize a virus, just having a light in the duct work isn't going to do a thing if the virus just blows past the light. Now the light may be useful to denature virus that get stuck in a filter but most of those duct UV lights are just scams. They also tend to be UV-A or UV-B lights as UV-C are largely not even visible and both UV-A and UV-B would take hours of exposure to denature the virus. Is the air going to be hanging around that light for hours when the fan is blowing? Besides, how much investment have there been in improving HVAC filtration? Even increasing the filtration to MERV-13 would require boosting the air pump power or fitting a four inch thick low resistance MERV-13 filter. I'm talking about portable units that could be easily deployed and how surprising it is to not at least have had portable units commonly deployed one year into the pandemic.
@@TheDobbermn that's not what he said. He was appreciating that THIS video IS current. Their recent video releases have just been reruns. This is the first genuinely new video they've done in a while.
Kinda seems like a terrible idea though. I made one with one filter a while back and there was no airflow. I would have liked to see a demonstration of the airflow here, because it costs $100 to set up. Seems like a lot
Ooph. Totally agree! I wish I wasn't so relaxed about this at my first job out of highschool! I worked PT for 5 years at a franchise pottery studio and naively signed a disclosure about this but can't remember what specific harms it mentioned. No one on staff ever wore masks with the glaze dust or for anything else. Knowledge is definitely power, and so is age/experience 😊👍
We manufacture filters so I will try and explain how any system can operate fine on a merv 13 or higher. It has to do with pleat count, think of your air filter in your car. It only works well because there are a lot of pleats stacked next to each other. This enables your engine to pull air through a very small filer with little resistance, if you eliminate half the pleats the car would not run well. The more pleats the lower the pressure drop. A merv 13 filter should have 15 pleats per foot to achieve a pressure drop comparable to a merv 8. Here is the catch you have a media that costs more per square foot, you have to use more of it to make the same filter in a merv 8 hence this filter will cost at least twice as much as a merv 8. Hope this clarifies.
Do your 4” filters have the same amount of filter media as your 1” filters? I’m trying to decrease the initial dP without sacrificing efficiency. I want to increase the media area by increasing the number of pleats per inch, or keeping the same number of pleats per inch but increasing pleat height. Seems like residential filter manufacturers don’t publish pressure drop and media area, just efficiency.
Clear info on retrofitting a whole home unit. Thank You for making the concerns known. Been using the single filter on box fans for years in the garage. 4 sided is a wonderful idea.
As an HVAC guy, thank you for telling everyone NOT to go buy a 1 inch merv 13 air filter. Those are home wreckers. Those require very specific system designs, like one filter for every room in the house.
@@charlies.5777 That's impossible to guess at. It depends on you much headroom was designed into your system. You can tell by turning the system on and then dropping in the filter. The more the filter snaps into place, the more of a restriction it is. Another thing you could try is taping some kind of streamer to your supply grills, like yarn or toilet paper or whatever. You'll be able to see how much air flow you're losing. In the end it's your house. Try it and see if you notice the difference either in filtration or how your house feels. Personally, I use Flanders EZ Flow II merv 4 about $1.50 each. Air flow is the key to comfort. It's why you have an HVAC system. To move air of the right temperature to where you want it.
@@tjrooger1092 Thanks for your advice - I appreciate it. FOR what it's worth, when you're standing under a vent when the HVAC is running, it feels like you're under a hair dryer and If you drop a piece of paper by the air return when it's running, it pulls it Out of the air like a vacuum cleaner. Hopefully that's a good sign, ESPECIALLY since it didn't do that when I had the higher-rated ( RE MERV rating) 3M filter in there.
@@charlies.5777 We have a 1" MERV 13 in our HVAC from 3M and also one on a box fan. It did not break the HVAC and does an excellent job of removing particles. We can test it with our Dylos 1100 Pro particle counter. Our HVAC is heat only with no continuous fan so we can't use it very often, however. We have 3 expensive HEPA purifiers with carbon as well. I've heard that MERV 16 is too much but not MERV 13. But check with a pro.
Why don't they just make every new system with high merv filters in mind? It seems dumb how you can get a brand new system that can't even handle filters designed a decade ago. With the way things currently are you're left with two choices: Either running a high merv filter that gives you clean air but restricts air flow and damages your system or a lower merv rated filter that allows for good air flow but doesn't clean the air very well. Either way you're forced to settle for less than optimal performance.
This is genius!! I recently purchased 2 reaaaaalllllly expensive air purifiers and the replacement filters are expensive as well just last week, needless to say I will be returning the expensive air purifiers and making two of these! One for my office space one for my home.
AS AN ASTHMATIC, THIS INFO IS INVALUABLE AND M AFFORDABLE FOR MY BUDGET AND A WISE DECISION FOR ANY BUDJET, SO GRATEFUL !!!! ,,LOVE THIS CHANNEL,,,THANKYOU FROM MY HEART!!!
I’m not sure but I saw a video where someone was putting filters in their air vents not sure if thats okay or not. I have no one to ask 😂 and I’m nosey I will watch anything that has to do with someone making something.
Time for a nerd rant! Merv isn't the best system for rating medical filtration. HEPA is a better designation for measuring this kind of filtration. With HEPA filter media, smaller particles are electrostatically attracted to the filter media, bigger particles will hit the media and stick. Think of HEPA filters as a bunch of spider webs instead of a strainer like the MERV system. The hardest particles to filter are 0.3 micron. The 0.3 micron size are a bit big to fall to the electrostatic charge, but small enough to follow the air flow around the fibers. Hepa is based the worst performing particle penetration size. E.g. if a mask filters 95% of 0.3 micron particles, it is rated as N95, if it gets 99.8% it is an N100 that you might use when doing something like removing asbestos. HOWEVER this definitely helps! The practice of putting furnace filters in front of a box fan is endorsed by the asthma and allergy foundation as an affordable alternative to expensive air cleaners. It clearly shouldn't be used as safety equipment for removing a virus, but will clean up inside air (and takes the load off your furnace).
So can I use this type of filter to clean the air from a paint booth? I build scale models and don’t really have options for where I can use my airbrush, I live in Canada and venting outside is difficult due to the type of windows I have. Can I feed the air from my paint booth (desk top size) through this type of filter to remove the paint particulates? Would it remove the smell from solvents like mineral spirits or acetone?
@@inmybox2023 There are a lot of model painters that make their own mini-spray booth using something like this, but this filter will only take the overspray out of the air. Once the overspray is in the filter the paint still dries out and puts volatile compounds into the air passing through. Fumes like this require some kind of activated charcoal filter that will react and trap volatile gasses. There are sheets of charcoal filter you can add to knock down the odor some, but of course if you can smell it in the air, it is there!
HEPA isn't a rating system, but rather a type of filtration. It used to mean something, but its been trademarked and used as a generic term for high efficiency filtration.
Looking forward to showing this to my wife and suggesting putting it in the family room😂. But still a very awesome DIY that probably works better than air purifiers 2x the cost
While MERV 13 won't be perfect for viruses, there will be an improvement. This is because the filter does not need to filter out the very small virus, but rather the aerosols. Its along a similar line to why cloth face masks provide some protection, even though they do not have the capability to filter out virus particles. Would this filter make be feel safe enough to have guests over, absolutely not. Would I want this filter to help protect my family if I had to stay home sick, definitely.
Great idea! I improved upon this. Instead of 20x20 filters, I used 20x30. Made it 10 inches taller with an additional 800 inches of filter surface ( 10"x20") additional per filter (x4 sides). I used the cardboard box that the fan came in to cut out the base and taped it up with gorilla tape. Highest merv filter I could find at Home Depot was 10. Thank you for the great idea!
Been running essentially the same in middle of my house for 2 or 3 years now, except instead of using cardboard opposite the fan, I taped in a 20x20. My original plan was to modify an inexpensive furniture dolly to set it on, but just taped on 1" cubed blocks of cedar at the 4 corners. Filters last about 14mos, and no issues with fan so far.
Call around merv 10 isnt that great, you can spray a filter sticker on the filters to catch more. You want mim, merv 13. 15 is even better thats hospital grade merv 16 is clean room purification. Merv 10 is what newer hvac systems use. My filter in my hvac system are 5" thick. Oh look on Amazon. Honeywell or some off brand. They copy Air bear filters . Amazons a good place to look. You can search Google for merv ratings and what each category is for.
Oooooh, I"m upgrading my "old 20 box fan hack" to this! However, I'm going to use 3M painter tape and then duct tape on top of that...duct tape is going to leave so much GOOP on the fan :)
I have standing fans, allergic to diesel, fragrances, laundry soap & my bedroom & bathroom were full of such fumes leaking in from windows and floor boards. I finally managed to seal the leaks on the floor & bedroom window but to detox the rooms I saw a TV report similar & bought Merv11 wrapped it around my stand fans and amazing this removed all the diesel fumes from my bedroom and laundry fumes from my bathroom. I keep them running and I can finally sleep without wearing a gas mask. I have paid a fortune for air filters since 1986 and Merv11 wrapped around a fan is even better than anything I ever had.
Why didn't you run it....blow some smoke through it....anything. Show wattage on low/med/high....plenty of wattmeters out there. Pleats should be vertically aligned so they don't sag.
Very good discussion. Many people do not understand the problem with restricting air to the AC unit. We're told to change our filter to keep air flowing but then sold a highly restrictive filter. 🤔
Axial fan without a shroud = very little static pressure. Your furnace has a centrifugal blower capable of much higher static pressure and closer to 2000cfm (or more). That box fan isn't going to last 6 months running continuous and is much louder. You will get much better performance throwing a deeper filter in your furnace and running the fan. Also load on a centrifugal pump (fan) decreases with decreasing flow (decreasing mass). You will not "seize up" your blower motor, you will actually decrease the load. Blower motors have taps to adjust the airflow based on the amount of restriction from ductwork and filters. They are designed for this. The only risk is having too high of a delta T (temperature differential) across the heat exchanger, which can cause damage to a furnace if it is extreme or freeze up the coils on an air conditioner. The blower can be adjusted to compensate, as designed.
And these work nearly as good as an expensive HEPA filter, in fact, my cheap box fan has over 1,000 CFM, and expensive HEPA filters have around 200-300 CFM or less depending on the fan speed. The CFM will go down due to the added resistance of the filters. We have a Dylos 1100 Pro particle counter, so we can test if a filter works, and just one of these on a cheap target box fan removes even fine particles almost as good as an expensive HEPA filter. You can also get a MERV 13 filter made by 3M that can go in your HVAC (it did not break our HVAC but check with a pro before trying it on yours, it's usually the MERV 16 that is too much for HVAC, but check with a pro) we did it and it worked through the whole house. These small box fans only work in one room.
@@barneyrubble4827 Cheap box fan works for me nearly as well down to at least .5 microns. But I also have bought the expensive brand air purifiers too.
I prefer to orient the pleats horizontally so the dust don't fall off as easily when bumped. For more serious odor filtering, get a hydroponics carbon canister and attach a duct fan.
Before you upgrade your HVAC filter I recommend installing a magnehelic pressure gauge. Most systems are rated to run at .5 inches of water max dP (differential pressure), so get a gauge that goes to .5 or 1 inwc. Ideally your system will run at less than .3 inwc with a new filter, but there are more factors at work than the number of pleats or the efficiency of the filter media. If your return is not sized sufficiently it may mean higher face velocity at the filter. Higher face velocity means higher dP, which means the blower works harder to pull air. Installing a gauge will help you figure out the baseline of your system and determine what filter you can use. An added bonus is that you can start replacing filters when the pressure drop, or dP, gets close to .5inwc versus changing every three months. Unfortunately filter companies don’t publish pressure drop on the package.
The air blower will not work harder. It will actually pull less amps. Less airflow due to airflow restriction means less work. Now the evap coil is designed for a certain airflow, that in turn will work less efficiently.
@@da_Luv_U It depends on the type of system you have (PCS, constant torque, variable speed). Regardless if the blower works harder versus longer, more energy will be consumed to achieve the desired temperature as differential pressure increases.
It's a hack, but for esthetics, have the pleats in the same direction. And use aluminum sheet metal tape. And make the bottom a filter as well so it can be oriented in any position.
impressively simple and efficient! the video missed the fun part of testing the fan speeds though. another caveat, air purifiers use HEPA filters which I found to be around MERV 17??
Great idea! Thanks for the video. I have one with one side of HEPA filter only. It worked real well & resolved my allergy problem when the air was filled with ashes & dusts from the wild fire later last year. It only cost me a few $ for the box fan & the filter. Highly recommended!
These work great! The air filters at the store were never big enough for a small size 1600 sf house. Going to make another but so I can remove the cheap filters fast and leave the expensive ones in longer.
I would have put the cardboard on the bottom of the fan so the fan could sit upright. The thrust bearing of that fan will never last with it laying on its back like that.
Wow I never would have thought of that. Plus, having it on the side is just as easy to make and the fan can still fulfill it's mission in life: cooling people off.
Another commenter noted that this fan actually is rated for running horizontally, but it would have been best to have mentioned this issue in the video.
So is this the most economical option for a woodworking shop filter? Assuming we have a cyclone type prefilter with shop vac on major tools, but for filtering the fine dust in the air? Or are there better alternatives we should look at?
@@rwind656 don’t know about the most economical, but there are lots of box fan+air filter videos on YT showing different designs. This design is pretty good, and would help in wood shop. Many people layer thin (lower MERV) rated filters over the (higher MERV) fine particle filters in their wood shops to increase the life of the more expensive filters.
@@rwind656 I also use activated carbon sheeting layers in my garage filters to help handle some of the VOCs that may come off the chemicals I store in there. The amount of varnish, paint, and stain I keep stored in there, I feel like I should probably do something if I’m working in there for hours.
Thank you for talking about the resistance aspect of this. I always assumed that by putting in a better filter, you would have to be adding work for the system itself and it is nice to know that my brain wasn't off.
I watched this on This Old Hse three times and still had questions. This makes me feel like less of a moron, y'all were also thinking and wondering. Thanks to geniuses here.
I built mine with 20x30x1 filtrete 1900s and added filtrete basics as prefilters. Use it to filter basement. I just removed my prefilter after 16 months. I guess my particles were smaller because the 1900s are very dirty. The basics are only slightly dirty. I am thinking rebuilding with double 1900s so i can just replace the outer set without reconstructing the core four filters.
Very cool, although suprised you didnt go into more detail around FPR, which is what many box stores sell in terms of filters. And I believe you said it cost around $70 to make it, where a HEPA filtering unit from Winix can be had for around $90 and the filter will last a year. Definitly right size it for the space. And a HEPA filter will get even more finer materials from the air. Thank you for using the platform to get the word out, its so important.
I've always used one of the low mervs at the entrance of the filter box, to save the hepa filter from the animal hair clogging. My a/c is in a small room with a 2' door. It has a filter in the door, prior to the air entering the a/c unit. I'm considering building a box that will sit just inside the door, with the 20" box fan, to pre-filter the air and take some of the load off of the a/c unit!
Neither came up with the design. It has been in use for decades. It's like someone claiming to have invented putting a rubberband around a deck of cards.
They used this type of "box", to trap cigarette smoke, 30 years ago, from a break room. it worked great. They used 1" thick filters, and FIVE of them, mounted in the ceiling. The guy used a rebar welded frame.
First video of theirs I remember seeing in the past 10 months where they mention Covid, so I assumed they've been off all this time. New videos starting again?
What I have done is add pre filters to catch the larger particles. This way you won't clog the finer filter with the thick stuff. Throw away the cheaper coarser filters more often and conserve the finer filters.
I do the same thing except my pre-filters are the washable re-useable ones.
Totally unnecessary. If you're using them in your house they take forever to clog up. Now, maybe if you're using it in a wood shop or if you're in an area with wildfire smoke, sure, add pre filters. Keep in mind the more dense the filter the harder the fan has to work to pull air in.
@@one7decimal2eight Not true. I've tried it with and tried it without. You'd be surprised how much the cheap filters will catch. Don't believe me? Just try it out yourself in within a few weeks you'll see.
link for your pre filters? do they work with the setup In this video?
@@one7decimal2eight
Also a higher merv ratting can and will freeze your A coil and damage you compressor becuse the A coli froze up.
Trust me my old system would build up 4" of ice and tottaly stop the air flow.
Making the system work really hard and high electric bills.
You should avoid closing off rooms and closing vents you want the air to move without restrictions.
I'm not sure why other window fans have become such pieces of garbage ua-cam.com/users/postUgkxGjG43--gYqIoT4Xkur2PqCrtbKwTv2h6 but this one definitely is nice. It's quiet, it has buttons for different functions that you generally don't have to keep pressing over and over again like some of the others, and the remote is a nice feature. Still, button simplification could go further to single functions for each and every one, but it's decent enough. It's a very quiet fan, the quietest window fan that I have ever had, and that alone is worth the extra money over the cheaper ones.
As a toxic mold survivor, I gotta say this is amazingly helpful. This is actually something that people with extreme mold sensitivity and reactions does to help keep them from getting sick, disabled, etc... But I’ll be doing this as an ac unit as well in the hot summer since I can’t use my ac system as mold is inside them and would blow mycotoxins all over my home, belongings and myself. Thanks so much!!!!!
Exactly what I'm dealing with now. I'm in low income housing and we have a central ac, been running for 3 days and I already smell the mold. I have my ION fan going, but looking for more options. I have severe heat sensitivity so I need to use the AC.
@@WisdomAgreements
I totally get all of that. I’d rather be hot and learn how to cool my home and body down vs get more mold suck and ruin my things again.
I found some green filters at Home Depot. I covered the vents and it traps mold, dust, dust mites, pollen, etc. It's just like this.
It may be too expensive (cost me my $200 covid support check), but one thing I did was get the AirFree mini incinerator air cleaner, to actually kill rather than just trap mold & mycotoxins. I don't know how much it would help if the problem is in the air conditioner itself, but I know it's helped in my intractably moldy bathroom.
I know another thing my doctor did was put me on Milk Thistle Extract for mold toxicity, and it helped me a lot.
Best of luck on your healing journey!!
If you have a fan pull air through an area of water there won't be expensive filters to change, just need to replace the water periodically. The rainbow vacuum uses the same idea.
So i seen a video where the dude put the fan facing down blowing the air into the box so what way is better?
Good for people who burn wood for heat.
I do and have the 1 side version and love it. Not concerned at all with a virus, im concerned with inhaling random particulates into my lungs that i can see when the light comes thru the window sometimes.
Definitely! Also we have baseboard heaters here and the dust is insane, I’m building at least one of these this week.
And maybe their long-suffering neighbours!
Ignorance of the specifics of COVID-19 aside (understanding this is 3 years ago, hype and misinformation was still strong), duct taping these to your fan make a huge mess of these cheap box fans when you go to pull it off and replace the soiled filters. I use painter's tape, it's perfectly fine for adhesive power and peels of easily and doesn't leave duct tape's residue and paint peeling. My only advice is to invest in a solid fan, with a moderate to high CFM even if you are using it for a smaller space (mine is in a 20x15sqft room). The one linked in the description is approx 1800CFM, not terrible but there are slightly more powerful out there that really make a difference in the air flow as long as you don't go overboard on the MIRV ratings.
Fyi. I just bought the Filterbuy 20x20x2, Merv11. It came from Amazon "bare" (no wrapping or labels) inside a DUSTY cardboard box. Now, I wonder if the integrity of the pricey filters are compromised. Ugh..
Is it better to use 20"x20"x2" or 20"x20"x1"?
The Merv 13 filter can stop a particle .3 microns in size, however the corona virus is .1 micron. Bottom line is corona slides through a Merv 13 easily.
The real virus is sitting in the white house, Corona virus won't be a big deal for too much longer.
i head it was 500 mircons
yes, the virus is that small however, The virus cannot move around without riding on moisture particles that are around .5 to .3.
@@SacredShiro People don't seem to understand that.
Rather than the fan pointing up, are there advantages to orienting the fan so the out-flowing air can be aimed at myself to provide an evaporative cooling effect in warmer conditions? Is the outgoing air moving so much slower as to not provide much evaporative cooling effect?
Disadvantages? (perhaps somewhat lower structural strength)? This would result in putting the cardboard blocking surface on the bottom, opposite the control knobs.
----> ---->
----> ---->
----> ---->
rather than
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
| | | | | | | | |
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
| | | | | | | | |
I think UP would help re circulation, thus moving air, allowing the cube to purifiy more and more air.
Having a cube simply aimed at your face wouldn't have the same effect on entire rooms.
Duct tape the sides in the back it has to be a good seal or dust and stuff will go to the openings too,virus particulate is .1 micron polled is .3 etc etc,merv is just to thick use a thiner one or you will over heat your fan or worse,justsayn.
The air in my apartment is about to super crisp
Please don’t waste your money. Use this to clean your shop air for wood dust. Don’t think you are actually gonna stop coronavirus with this Mickey Mouse set up. Lol
Three months ago I made two of these and began using them in our two story house. There was an immediate noticeable decrease in dust on furniture and floors. Best of all, we realized after a few weeks we no longer wake up at 3 am with sinus/allergy headaches. We are breathing easier. Thank you!
Glad 2 hear that ... allergy sufferers are helpless with dust problems
So one fan is enough to cover each floor of the house?
Good to know that this system works for you.
I've done what many people have done, used one filter on the backside of a box fan, but this one is far out!
It may even work better if the box is not behind the back of the fan
I used one and it helped clean allergens out of the air. Much better! They made me feel foggy and groggy and even kinda boggy. Now I think clearly, and my IQ jumped 50 points! Would be more impressive if my total IQ wasn't 88.
Surprised no mention about using in wood shop. Been using for years. Gotta change them a lot more often tho
Pizza ... have seen similar on both wood shops and auto body shops. There's even commercial versions sold, although more expensive. OTOH, the commercial units are rated to be explosion proof. (chemicals, etc)
Indeed. I use only MERV 4s and they help a lot!
I've been using cheap 20x20 air filter taped to a cheap box fan in my work shop for years. I lightly fog the filter with some spray adhesive. Work's great for capturing over spray particals when painting.
@@derrinpickett9948 what level filters are u using? I just bought some merv 10 filters at $25 a piece, but I was thinking of buying the cheaper ones and spraying them and seeing if it works as good as the higher merv filters
Do your filters work on smoke when sprayed?
Really good idea- i definitely don't have proper ventilation or any dust collection other than a dust pan and brush.
Wow, shades of Red Green show with making stuff using duct tape!
Remember: if the girls don’t find you handsome, at least they’ll find you handy
@@babyloobibovski2947 you beat me to it!
I'm a man, but I can change, If I have to, I guess.
The handyman's secret weapon.
HAROLD!!!!
I'm remodeling a house and this just gave me some ideas on how to setup a filtration system to help keep from contaminating the finished rooms with construction dust and keep the room air a bit healthier.
Please tell me more. I’m doing the same. I’m thinking of using pvc pipes for both air input pipes and exhaust pipes. I mean why not?
Use a merv 1 filter on the outside of each merv 13 to control larger dust and hair thus prolonging the life of the merv 13
I live in Southern Oregon and during the last ten years we have had the worst fire seasons ever!!! Even with all the windows closed, we still have smoke pollution entering our home. If you have ever had to deal with smoke inhalation over months at a time, you will understand how important this simple invention is...Thank You for this simple, effective, and potentially life saving device!!!
Me too, building one today!
Yes, same in Southern California the air is horrible, dust like I’ve never seen before.
Did you build one and how did you like the results? Also fan blowing in or out?
@@Nunnia222 6:57 Air in from the sides and out from the top
@@Nunnia222same question. For a second, he spoke of arrows on filters, but not on fan. Any answer on trial and error? (Wildfire 2.5 particulate indoors because my windows are not airtight.)
This also works with painters tape, which causes much less damage when the unit is disassembled.
The glues let out VOC’s
I wanted to see it in action with some smoke to see how well it draws it in and how well it filters. A follow up maybe This Old House??
Yeah. . What the heck ? Nice idea but if it is not powerful enough to pull in pieces you want and need to filter out it's nice but maybe a better idea is to save up for one built with specs to do the job.
@@tmorgan7939 look up Izzy Swans video on a box fan filter vs one sold. You'll be surprised.
@@tmorgan7939 i made mine like this model 1 week ago and is not worth the 50 i spent in the 4 "7" rated filters. Doesn't work. I works better to put just 1 filter attached in the back of the fan
@@benjabhd Thanks . Good luck with the changes you made..
Take the idea and improve it 🤑
Put basic foam or cloth outside filters as a prefilter to extend filter life. Prefilter catches larger particles. Clean prefilter from time to time with vacuum cleaner.
I use cheaper lower merv filters, like a 6 or something. I just double them up.
...and use a pre-filter on your vacuum filter. Then, vacuum your vacuum's pre-filter and filter with a second pre-filtered vacuum. Continue forever. :D
@@ItchyKneeSon So, you get to cursing at the recursive.
I bought washable air filters. They are the best. Just pop it out, hit it with the hose. Next morning dry ready to go. Saved a fortune.
@@ItchyKneeSon Ha, ha, that's about the size of it....... then install a germ zapper laser.
You sure this isn't called a Corsi-Rosenthal air filter?
Is anyone else thinking “Apollo 13?” 😂😂😂
Yes :-) this scene ua-cam.com/video/ry55--J4_VQ/v-deo.html
Lol sure am
Yes!
Comment of the month award. Congratulations!!!
I am now
They have a link in the description for Amazon to buy the cardboard cutout 😂 I'm sure everyone has a old cardboard box in their garage that they can use.
How about the box the filters will come in hahaha
LOL
Or perhaps use the box the fan came in if you did not take the display box for the filters...which is what I did.
Hahaha
Great now I can take this Minecraft block everywhere I go!
They that's a great idea! ;)
I did a basic version of this when we were choking with wildfire smoke back in August, worked well and it was pretty obvious how much it was filtering out of the air in the house.. About the only thing I would change here is to run the fan vertically, as it was designed. Laying it horizontal like that is begging for a motor or bushing failure, depending on how that motor is designed to run. Leave it standing like it was meant to be.
Yes. Vertical.... couldn't understand why the fan was on top.
The fan is on top to increase air flow & filtration. If it was vertical you have less filtration and higher air resistance and higher loads on the motor.
@@dougc78 How so? Gravity cannot be of much help here. If the bottom of the box was cardboard, and all other sides were filters, you would have the exact same amount of air flow and pressure with the fan sitting in its vertical position, as designed.
@@coreyg7255 Very good point!! I completely overlooked the cardboard bottom... Let's just call this one a "Brain Fart"
According to Camparetto, the HVAC engineer who designed this system, it was designed with a horizontal fan because particles, even microscopic ones, settle due to gravity. That means, first, that the density of contaminants is greater near the floor. A vertical fan pulls contaminants in from the air column on one side of the room, and blows the clean air into the other side of the room. Contaminants already on the downwind side of the room are simply blown further across the room, and they can easily collect in eddies. A horizontal fan pulls the particles in from near the floor, where they are in higher density, and blows the clean air up; the resultant air currents push contaminants from the corners of the room back towards the filter box. It's a more efficient way of cleaning the entire air volume of the room.
Best option is to use those cheapo filters in the furnace so you don’t restrict your hvac system and then use little filter systems like this in each room. You’ll catch so much junk.
Im gonna build one of these and walk around town wearing it :)
That’s awesome.
merv :)
Like Marshmello....? 🤔
Actually laughed out loud!
Wear it as a hat and your personal air space will be 100% covid free... :0
Northern California: Made one 2 weeks ago, the day our area started to get bad air from big Tamarack Fire 3 hrs away.
works perfectly! Did not have any duct tape, used Tvek tape instead. Air filter is placed in front of old glass door in kitchen that goes out to patio.
Aug3- Usung it now about 3-1/2 weeks: dyi air filter works really really well. Had 5 days bad air&;all ok. put it in daily even when air ok - noticeable difference in using less daily asthma inhaler.
I'm in Nor Cal as well and with an AQI of over 450 today, I'm thinking I will head to Lowe's tomorrow to make this. Our whole family just finished with having covid and 2 of us have lost our sense of taste and smell so I have no idea if it smells smokey inside, at least this way, I can see the filters getting dirty!
Aiming the filter outside is not as good of an idea as it sounds. The fan sucks dirty air in but blows clean air out. When you point the fan outside, it draws more dirty air from outside back into your home.
If you put it in a room, it circulates the air and dust. It sucks the dust into the filters and blows clean air in the room. It can leave you with cleaner air in the room than you have outside. That's what you want.
Early in the pandemic, I had envision people setting these up everywhere, hanging from the ceiling in school hallways, over restaurant tables, etc. but of course we hardly saw any of these at all.
@@613kc You truly have a loose interpretation of what constitutes proof. Have you always deluded yourself...
In some schools the air purifier is installed in the air return ducks.
@@Juangomez9186 Placing more filters in the air return typically requires increasing the power to the centrifugal air pumps due to the higher resistance as HVAC, even home HVAC are designed for the 25% filtration of fibreglass air filters. At the very least, the filter housing would have to hold thicker filters such as 4" or 6" thick MERV-13 to reduce the resistance (the thicker filters have deeper folds hence more surface area for the air to flow through). Then there's also how many times the HVAC are designed to cycle the air in the room in a given period of time. Portable air purifiers would be less expensive than retrofitting the HVAC with better filtration and could offer more directed and more frequent filtration.
@@johnwang9914 not always. There’s the iWAVE air scrubber which isn’t a filter. There’s bypass HEPA filters so it’s not fully blocking the duct. Then you have product like the SoliceAir purification systems. Both UVV and UVC lights to combat odors and surface/airborne viruses. Along with their Micropower guard filter which is 1 inch, also ionizes particles,and can filter out particles down to .03 microns in size with air resistance the same as a standard 1” pleated filter. These are usually the systems schools and corporations install.
@@moorefilmltd UV-C takes a few seconds to sterilize a virus, just having a light in the duct work isn't going to do a thing if the virus just blows past the light. Now the light may be useful to denature virus that get stuck in a filter but most of those duct UV lights are just scams. They also tend to be UV-A or UV-B lights as UV-C are largely not even visible and both UV-A and UV-B would take hours of exposure to denature the virus. Is the air going to be hanging around that light for hours when the fan is blowing? Besides, how much investment have there been in improving HVAC filtration? Even increasing the filtration to MERV-13 would require boosting the air pump power or fitting a four inch thick low resistance MERV-13 filter. I'm talking about portable units that could be easily deployed and how surprising it is to not at least have had portable units commonly deployed one year into the pandemic.
Yeah every HVAC guy always recommends a filter that you can stick your finger right through. Makes no sense to me at all.
Nice to see some current day videos rather than stuff from several years being posted as if it were new.
how is it not current day when they are talking about COVID?
@@TheDobbermn that's not what he said. He was appreciating that THIS video IS current. Their recent video releases have just been reruns. This is the first genuinely new video they've done in a while.
@@coryulrich6489 Yep, as i reread it you are correct.
Kinda seems like a terrible idea though. I made one with one filter a while back and there was no airflow. I would have liked to see a demonstration of the airflow here, because it costs $100 to set up. Seems like a lot
I'm pretty sure this came out a while ago, like last spring
Just made this for my pottery studio because silicosis is real! Thank you !
Ooph. Totally agree!
I wish I wasn't so relaxed about this at my first job out of highschool! I worked PT for 5 years at a franchise pottery studio and naively signed a disclosure about this but can't remember what specific harms it mentioned. No one on staff ever wore masks with the glaze dust or for anything else. Knowledge is definitely power, and so is age/experience 😊👍
We manufacture filters so I will try and explain how any system can operate fine on a merv 13 or higher. It has to do with pleat count, think of your air filter in your car. It only works well because there are a lot of pleats stacked next to each other. This enables your engine to pull air through a very small filer with little resistance, if you eliminate half the pleats the car would not run well. The more pleats the lower the pressure drop. A merv 13 filter should have 15 pleats per foot to achieve a pressure drop comparable to a merv 8. Here is the catch you have a media that costs more per square foot, you have to use more of it to make the same filter in a merv 8 hence this filter will cost at least twice as much as a merv 8. Hope this clarifies.
Do your 4” filters have the same amount of filter media as your 1” filters? I’m trying to decrease the initial dP without sacrificing efficiency. I want to increase the media area by increasing the number of pleats per inch, or keeping the same number of pleats per inch but increasing pleat height. Seems like residential filter manufacturers don’t publish pressure drop and media area, just efficiency.
Clear info on retrofitting a whole home unit. Thank You for making the concerns known. Been using the single filter on box fans for years in the garage. 4 sided is a wonderful idea.
I put a merv 8 4" 20x20 on a 20" box fan, it works awesome and doesn't take up so much space.
This old house always putting out quality stuff, still one of my favorite shows
A 15 yo boy invented this and put out the info free for everyone
The host is a laughing stock. He knows all the dumb questions he’s asking. This was a great laughing stock video.
As an HVAC guy, thank you for telling everyone NOT to go buy a 1 inch merv 13 air filter. Those are home wreckers. Those require very specific system designs, like one filter for every room in the house.
I read somewhere that a 3M 1500 Filtrete filter has an excellent balance of low restriction and high filtration. Do you agree with this statement??
@@charlies.5777 That's impossible to guess at. It depends on you much headroom was designed into your system. You can tell by turning the system on and then dropping in the filter. The more the filter snaps into place, the more of a restriction it is. Another thing you could try is taping some kind of streamer to your supply grills, like yarn or toilet paper or whatever. You'll be able to see how much air flow you're losing. In the end it's your house. Try it and see if you notice the difference either in filtration or how your house feels. Personally, I use Flanders EZ Flow II merv 4 about $1.50 each. Air flow is the key to comfort. It's why you have an HVAC system. To move air of the right temperature to where you want it.
@@tjrooger1092
Thanks for your advice - I appreciate it.
FOR what it's worth, when you're standing under a vent when the HVAC is running, it feels like you're under a hair dryer and If you drop a piece of paper by the air return when it's running, it pulls it Out of the air like a vacuum cleaner. Hopefully that's a good sign, ESPECIALLY since it didn't do that when I had the higher-rated ( RE MERV rating) 3M filter in there.
@@charlies.5777 We have a 1" MERV 13 in our HVAC from 3M and also one on a box fan. It did not break the HVAC and does an excellent job of removing particles. We can test it with our Dylos 1100 Pro particle counter. Our HVAC is heat only with no continuous fan so we can't use it very often, however. We have 3 expensive HEPA purifiers with carbon as well. I've heard that MERV 16 is too much but not MERV 13. But check with a pro.
Why don't they just make every new system with high merv filters in mind? It seems dumb how you can get a brand new system that can't even handle filters designed a decade ago. With the way things currently are you're left with two choices: Either running a high merv filter that gives you clean air but restricts air flow and damages your system or a lower merv rated filter that allows for good air flow but doesn't clean the air very well. Either way you're forced to settle for less than optimal performance.
Problem is that the higher MIRV filters can choke up your AC causing freezing of the evaporator, or general lack of flow and poor performance
This is genius!! I recently purchased 2 reaaaaalllllly expensive air purifiers and the replacement filters are expensive as well just last week, needless to say I will be returning the expensive air purifiers and making two of these! One for my office space one for my home.
AS AN ASTHMATIC, THIS INFO IS INVALUABLE AND M AFFORDABLE FOR MY BUDGET AND A WISE DECISION FOR ANY BUDJET, SO GRATEFUL !!!! ,,LOVE THIS CHANNEL,,,THANKYOU FROM MY HEART!!!
What if you put one or two of these near your air intake vents in the house? Wouldn't that circulate cleaner air for the full house?
I’m not sure but I saw a video where someone was putting filters in their air vents not sure if thats okay or not. I have no one to ask 😂 and I’m nosey I will watch anything that has to do with someone making something.
will it filter out politics during thanksgiving?
I use one good filter 20 x 25 up against a box fan. Simple, but it works great.
Time for a nerd rant!
Merv isn't the best system for rating medical filtration. HEPA is a better designation for measuring this kind of filtration. With HEPA filter media, smaller particles are electrostatically
attracted to the filter media, bigger particles will hit the media and stick. Think of HEPA filters as a bunch of spider webs instead of a strainer like the MERV system. The hardest particles to filter are 0.3 micron. The 0.3 micron size are a bit big to fall to the electrostatic charge, but small enough to follow the air flow around the fibers. Hepa is based the worst performing particle penetration size. E.g. if a mask filters 95% of 0.3 micron particles, it is rated as N95, if it gets 99.8% it is an N100 that you might use when doing something like removing asbestos.
HOWEVER this definitely helps! The practice of putting furnace filters in front of a box fan is endorsed by the asthma and allergy foundation as an affordable alternative to expensive air cleaners. It clearly shouldn't be used as safety equipment for removing a virus, but will clean up inside air (and takes the load off your furnace).
So can I use this type of filter to clean the air from a paint booth? I build scale models and don’t really have options for where I can use my airbrush, I live in Canada and venting outside is difficult due to the type of windows I have.
Can I feed the air from my paint booth (desk top size) through this type of filter to remove the paint particulates? Would it remove the smell from solvents like mineral spirits or acetone?
@@inmybox2023 There are a lot of model painters that make their own mini-spray booth using something like this, but this filter will only take the overspray out of the air. Once the overspray is in the filter the paint still dries out and puts volatile compounds into the air passing through. Fumes like this require some kind of activated charcoal filter that will react and trap volatile gasses. There are sheets of charcoal filter you can add to knock down the odor some, but of course if you can smell it in the air, it is there!
HEPA isn't a rating system, but rather a type of filtration. It used to mean something, but its been trademarked and used as a generic term for high efficiency filtration.
They know you are right, but there pockets are filled with crisp 100 dollar bills!
Looking forward to showing this to my wife and suggesting putting it in the family room😂. But still a very awesome DIY that probably works better than air purifiers 2x the cost
While MERV 13 won't be perfect for viruses, there will be an improvement. This is because the filter does not need to filter out the very small virus, but rather the aerosols. Its along a similar line to why cloth face masks provide some protection, even though they do not have the capability to filter out virus particles.
Would this filter make be feel safe enough to have guests over, absolutely not. Would I want this filter to help protect my family if I had to stay home sick, definitely.
Side note- merv13 is one step away from hepa
@@skyline5354 not!
srdsrd16 excellent point!
Your not going to catch the virus particles.
@@Sctronic209 but you can catch the aerosols the viruses are hitching a ride on.
So I’m guessing Jimmy Diresta made this but it was an all-steel encased version right? 🤣
And on casters to make it portable!
Easier to just get rid of the family and keep the lower grade filter.
Thinking big not small. Amen brother.
So let's say for the sake of argument, I'm in my garage smoking a fine cigar.... This would leave no trace after such a hypothetical activity?
Mind your ash!
Need to add a carbon filter.
Hypothetically....Just get her to smoke cigars lol.
Great idea! I improved upon this. Instead of 20x20 filters, I used 20x30. Made it 10 inches taller with an additional 800 inches of filter surface ( 10"x20") additional per filter (x4 sides). I used the cardboard box that the fan came in to cut out the base and taped it up with gorilla tape. Highest merv filter I could find at Home Depot was 10. Thank you for the great idea!
Been running essentially the same in middle of my house for 2 or 3 years now, except instead of using cardboard opposite the fan, I taped in a 20x20. My original plan was to modify an inexpensive furniture dolly to set it on, but just taped on 1" cubed blocks of cedar at the 4 corners. Filters last about 14mos, and no issues with fan so far.
Call around merv 10 isnt that great, you can spray a filter sticker on the filters to catch more. You want mim, merv 13. 15 is even better thats hospital grade merv 16 is clean room purification.
Merv 10 is what newer hvac systems use.
My filter in my hvac system are 5" thick.
Oh look on Amazon. Honeywell or some off brand. They copy Air bear filters .
Amazons a good place to look.
You can search Google for merv ratings and what each category is for.
National Allergy Supply (online) tends to be expensive, but I know they carry filters of at least Merv 12
Over achiever...lol! Great idea!!
Felt like a serious “Handy Man Corner”. Should have asked Steve Smith to guest star!
No, better to have Red Green. hehehe...excuse me, it's time for the man's prayer.
If they don't find you handsome, they can at least find you handy
This looks like it works good but it really doesn’t
Use Aluminum tape in place of the duck tape it will stick much better...
As fellow DIYers, we also made a video showing another way to do this, and that's okay. ua-cam.com/video/nX4gKcBUgDE/v-deo.html
Get to it!
Oooooh, I"m upgrading my "old 20 box fan hack" to this! However, I'm going to use 3M painter tape and then duct tape on top of that...duct tape is going to leave so much GOOP on the fan :)
Use bungeee cord
Old painters tape leaves a glue too.
Goof off will remove it without much trouble.
Careful... Don't filter too much.
Good way to make people MORE sick and dependant is to clean EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME!
Thinking about doing this to filter out dust in my home. No matter how clean I keep it, most surface got dust after a couple days.
Where is the best place to set something like this up in the home? Centrally located or close to your air intake for central heating/air system?
I have standing fans, allergic to diesel, fragrances, laundry soap & my bedroom & bathroom were full of such fumes leaking in from windows and floor boards. I finally managed to seal the leaks on the floor & bedroom window but to detox the rooms I saw a TV report similar & bought Merv11 wrapped it around my stand fans and amazing this removed all the diesel fumes from my bedroom and laundry fumes from my bathroom. I keep them running and I can finally sleep without wearing a gas mask. I have paid a fortune for air filters since 1986 and Merv11 wrapped around a fan is even better than anything I ever had.
Why didn't you run it....blow some smoke through it....anything. Show wattage on low/med/high....plenty of wattmeters out there. Pleats should be vertically aligned so they don't sag.
Very good discussion. Many people do not understand the problem with restricting air to the AC unit. We're told to change our filter to keep air flowing but then sold a highly restrictive filter. 🤔
Axial fan without a shroud = very little static pressure. Your furnace has a centrifugal blower capable of much higher static pressure and closer to 2000cfm (or more). That box fan isn't going to last 6 months running continuous and is much louder. You will get much better performance throwing a deeper filter in your furnace and running the fan.
Also load on a centrifugal pump (fan) decreases with decreasing flow (decreasing mass). You will not "seize up" your blower motor, you will actually decrease the load. Blower motors have taps to adjust the airflow based on the amount of restriction from ductwork and filters. They are designed for this. The only risk is having too high of a delta T (temperature differential) across the heat exchanger, which can cause damage to a furnace if it is extreme or freeze up the coils on an air conditioner. The blower can be adjusted to compensate, as designed.
4" MERV filter is anywhere from $55- 96 where I live. 2024 price. $220- 400 for this system
And these work nearly as good as an expensive HEPA filter, in fact, my cheap box fan has over 1,000 CFM, and expensive HEPA filters have around 200-300 CFM or less depending on the fan speed. The CFM will go down due to the added resistance of the filters. We have a Dylos 1100 Pro particle counter, so we can test if a filter works, and just one of these on a cheap target box fan removes even fine particles almost as good as an expensive HEPA filter. You can also get a MERV 13 filter made by 3M that can go in your HVAC (it did not break our HVAC but check with a pro before trying it on yours, it's usually the MERV 16 that is too much for HVAC, but check with a pro) we did it and it worked through the whole house. These small box fans only work in one room.
Dc fan motors with controllers are very load sensitive, ask me how I know! Very expensive repair, controller bout $600. Motor bout $1300 w/o labor
@@barneyrubble4827 Cheap box fan works for me nearly as well down to at least .5 microns. But I also have bought the expensive brand air purifiers too.
someone should make cheap plastic housing to drop 4 filters into. i could see it selling well.
I prefer to orient the pleats horizontally so the dust don't fall off as easily when bumped. For more serious odor filtering, get a hydroponics carbon canister and attach a duct fan.
Before you upgrade your HVAC filter I recommend installing a magnehelic pressure gauge. Most systems are rated to run at .5 inches of water max dP (differential pressure), so get a gauge that goes to .5 or 1 inwc. Ideally your system will run at less than .3 inwc with a new filter, but there are more factors at work than the number of pleats or the efficiency of the filter media. If your return is not sized sufficiently it may mean higher face velocity at the filter. Higher face velocity means higher dP, which means the blower works harder to pull air. Installing a gauge will help you figure out the baseline of your system and determine what filter you can use. An added bonus is that you can start replacing filters when the pressure drop, or dP, gets close to .5inwc versus changing every three months. Unfortunately filter companies don’t publish pressure drop on the package.
Great information that most people are absolutely ignorant of. Most systems have undersized returns.
@@tomfenimore9667 Very true. That's one of the reasons systems don't last as long as they should!
The air blower will not work harder. It will actually pull less amps. Less airflow due to airflow restriction means less work. Now the evap coil is designed for a certain airflow, that in turn will work less efficiently.
@@da_Luv_U It depends on the type of system you have (PCS, constant torque, variable speed). Regardless if the blower works harder versus longer, more energy will be consumed to achieve the desired temperature as differential pressure increases.
It's a hack, but for esthetics, have the pleats in the same direction. And use aluminum sheet metal tape. And make the bottom a filter as well so it can be oriented in any position.
I will be building up this today in my garage and hopefully finish it up in 20 days ... :)
🤣🤣🤣
It will cost twice as mush and take 3x as long, guaranteed.
If you think upping your HVAC merv filter rating will protect your family from the virus... you have bigger issues
impressively simple and efficient! the video missed the fun part of testing the fan speeds though. another caveat, air purifiers use HEPA filters which I found to be around MERV 17??
Too bad those filters could never even dream of catching something as tiny as Covid, or any viral contagion for that matter!… smh
Remove the plastic screen from the back of the box fan before assembling the air filters to reduce resistance.
Great idea! Thanks for the video. I have one with one side of HEPA filter only. It worked real well & resolved my allergy problem when the air was filled with ashes & dusts from the wild fire later last year. It only cost me a few $ for the box fan & the filter. Highly recommended!
I just now imagined a KAREN walking her dog with one of these built around her head.😂😂😂😂
lmao
These work great!
The air filters at the store were never big enough for a small size 1600 sf house.
Going to make another but so I can remove the cheap filters fast and leave the expensive ones in longer.
I would have put the cardboard on the bottom of the fan so the fan could sit upright. The thrust bearing of that fan will never last with it laying on its back like that.
Wow I never would have thought of that. Plus, having it on the side is just as easy to make and the fan can still fulfill it's mission in life: cooling people off.
Another commenter noted that this fan actually is rated for running horizontally, but it would have been best to have mentioned this issue in the video.
Looks like a DIY shop filter for clearing wood dust out of the air.
Exactly what I was thinking, especially around the spray booth
So is this the most economical option for a woodworking shop filter? Assuming we have a cyclone type prefilter with shop vac on major tools, but for filtering the fine dust in the air? Or are there better alternatives we should look at?
@@rwind656 don’t know about the most economical, but there are lots of box fan+air filter videos on YT showing different designs. This design is pretty good, and would help in wood shop. Many people layer thin (lower MERV) rated filters over the (higher MERV) fine particle filters in their wood shops to increase the life of the more expensive filters.
@@rwind656 I also use activated carbon sheeting layers in my garage filters to help handle some of the VOCs that may come off the chemicals I store in there. The amount of varnish, paint, and stain I keep stored in there, I feel like I should probably do something if I’m working in there for hours.
@@tabularasa820 Thanks. At this point, anything would help.
you're spending like 80 to 100 bucks every 3 months for the filters
Thank you for talking about the resistance aspect of this. I always assumed that by putting in a better filter, you would have to be adding work for the system itself and it is nice to know that my brain wasn't off.
Merv one are absolutely useless. Unless you want to pay me to clean secondary heat exchangers or evaporator could
With a hundred dollars in filters, you too can have a duct taped space ship in your home.
I watched this on This Old Hse three times and still had questions. This makes me feel like less of a moron, y'all were also thinking and wondering. Thanks to geniuses here.
Exaggerate much? On Amazon the filters are $40.
I just use a single filter for my small room. I’ve seen a video that uses 2 filters (think triangular.) This would be suitable for a much larger room.
Might be an option for apartments and places with a shared air system.
Is that a thing?
Exactly what I'm dealing with now.
I really like the back to back simple conversation style, it helps understand what's really important about the subject
I’ve thought about doing something like this. Seems like a good idea.
I got a giant rubber band and put it around my box fan with a filter over the suction side.
I built mine with 20x30x1 filtrete 1900s and added filtrete basics as prefilters. Use it to filter basement.
I just removed my prefilter after 16 months. I guess my particles were smaller because the 1900s are very dirty. The basics are only slightly dirty. I am thinking rebuilding with double 1900s so i can just replace the outer set without reconstructing the core four filters.
Very cool, although suprised you didnt go into more detail around FPR, which is what many box stores sell in terms of filters. And I believe you said it cost around $70 to make it, where a HEPA filtering unit from Winix can be had for around $90 and the filter will last a year. Definitly right size it for the space. And a HEPA filter will get even more finer materials from the air. Thank you for using the platform to get the word out, its so important.
This is fabulous! Has anyone come up with ways to make it pretty or camouflage it?
I've always used one of the low mervs at the entrance of the filter box, to save the hepa filter from the animal hair clogging. My a/c is in a small room with a 2' door. It has a filter in the door, prior to the air entering the a/c unit. I'm considering building a box that will sit just inside the door, with the 20" box fan, to pre-filter the air and take some of the load off of the a/c unit!
Too much,. Just tape a filter to the front and back of the fan directly.
Also, put one of these near each return air in the house to improve your whole house air quality.
So who came up with the solution, Neil Comparetto, or Corsi-Rosenthal box? Haven't wood workers been doing this for many many years too?
Neither came up with the design. It has been in use for decades. It's like someone claiming to have invented putting a rubberband around a deck of cards.
They used this type of "box", to trap cigarette smoke, 30 years ago, from a break room. it worked great. They used 1" thick filters, and FIVE of them, mounted in the ceiling. The guy used a rebar welded frame.
Build a COVID filter for your house!
Umm... if COVID is already in my house it maybe too late
First video of theirs I remember seeing in the past 10 months where they mention Covid, so I assumed they've been off all this time. New videos starting again?