Electronic Air Cleaners: A Quick and Easy Way to Clean Your Home's Air

Electronic air cleaners are exceptional systems that catch the tiniest particles that pass through your furnace air filter. Read on to learn how these durable, non-restrictive air cleaners can clear the air in your Northwest Arkansas home.

Portable or Whole-House Air Cleaning

Electronic air cleaners are available in portable units that can clean the air in single rooms. The more effective style is the whole-house electronic air cleaner. This type of system is installed in the return-side air duct by your HVAC technician, cleaning the air from all household living spaces — not just a limited space.

Installing the system on the return-side duct allows the air cleaner to capture contaminants before they reach furnace components. Also, air pressure is lower in the return-side duct, which allows a brief moment more for the cleaner to capture particles.

Take Charge of Your Indoor Air

Electronic air cleaners remove airborne contaminants, such as allergens and bioaerosols, from household air by electrostatic attraction, rather than impaction like typical pleated air filters. Here’s how:

• Return-side airflow passes through a pre-filter that captures larger particles.
• The smaller particles that passed through the pre-filter are given an electrical charge in an ionization field.
• The charged particles are attracted to and stick to collector plates with opposite charges.

Easy Care

The air cleaner components should be washed every two to four months, depending on how often you run the heating and cooling systems. The objective is to remove the contaminants captured by the collector plates, and clean the plates, pre-filter and post-filter. Here’s how:

• The filters should be gently rinsed and washed in warm water by hand.
• The collector plates may be washed in an automatic dishwasher or in the bathtub.
• Use soap containing sodium silicates (corrosion inhibitor).
• For dishwasher method, do not use the drying cycle. Let the cells air dry.
• For bathtub method, let the cells soak for half an hour in warm soapy water. Then, rinse and air dry.
• Carefully place the components back in the air cleaner when dry.

Contact Paschal Heat, Air & Geothermal for more information about the benefits of electronic air cleaners.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Springdale, Arkansas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about electronic air cleaners and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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