44 | January 2020
you are. Otherwise expect the air temperature in your
home to race up and down, and the surfaces of your
home to remain cold while literally sucking the heat out
of you. Instead, make sure your HVAC is BAD ASS…
more on that in a few months.
Filtration
Did you know we breathe 3000 gallons of air a day? And
that over 90% of that is indoors? In fact, many of our
kids spend less time outdoors than maximum security
inmates do.
Should we think more about indoor air quality?
Google PM2.5. Go on. Do it. It's a really dry thing that
really matters to human health, the World Health Organi-
zation considers it one of the biggest dangers to human
health. It also happens to be really easy to deal with inside
your home using your HVAC system.
PM 2.5 stands for Particulate Matter 2.5 microns and
below. It's really small dust. Anything that small gets in-
haled directly into your lungs. Below 1 micron it's even
worse, particles that small will go right through your lungs
and into your blood.
For example, diesel exhaust contains a lot of particles
under 1 micron, and they tend to be heavy metals. Really,
really bad news to breathe. If you live within a mile of a large
road, you're probably breathing diesel exhaust right now,
even indoors.
Thankfully it's pretty easy to filter most of that gar-
bage out with a good filter, we recommend MERV 11
or above. HEPA is the highest grade available and is
roughly MERV 16.
The problem is most HVAC systems can't handle the
thick (4-5") media filters needed to do this, and even if they
can, many fans use so much energy that it can cost $50-
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1632/0069/products/AirEffect-Merv-Performance-Comparison_
65cda16b-05ce-4514-a29e-a0beec81d2f3_2048x2048.jpg?v=1494937581
https://blissair.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/
pm25_comparison.jpg
